


Love and Symbiosis

by aurora_ophiuchus, dusk_dreamer_midnight_thief (aurora_ophiuchus)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: BDSM Scene, Dysfunctional Family, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, F/M, Falling In Love, Female Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, Manipulation, Pain, Relationship(s), Slow Romance
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-03-25
Updated: 2016-11-19
Packaged: 2018-03-19 13:55:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 25
Words: 90,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3612495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurora_ophiuchus/pseuds/aurora_ophiuchus, https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurora_ophiuchus/pseuds/dusk_dreamer_midnight_thief
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Not everyone in the Wizarding world fought for the cause, the bigger picture, the greater good… Exploring the nuances of the isolated world of the Hogwarts teachers. </p><p>Rated M for some slightly mature content spread out over various places.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Love and Symbiosis**

**Far From The Tree**

_1990._

The large oak tree shuddered and shred what little leaves it still greedily held onto as Professor Severus Snape apparated directly into the side of it. With a short yelp of pain he swiftly administered a retributive punch into the bark, which did quite the opposite of alleviating his displeasure... now he also had a bloodied gash along his knuckles to contend with.

Not even bothering to cast a healing spell over his dripping hand, he stumbled back up into the castle's grounds with the sole intention of going to bed and obtaining an immediate, dreamless sleep with a Calming Draught. Or a sledgehammer to the head. Either or.

Hogwarts castle was all but deserted on this cold midnight, as was to be expected. Snape easily managed to reach his quarters without detection. He flung open the door to his chamber and swiftly picked up the already waiting Calming Draught on his sitting room table with one swift movement. He swigged the entire goblet and flung it angrily to the ground as he reached the second doorway to his bedroom - only just barely bothering to rip off his travelling cloak before collapsing, fully clothed, upon his bed.

He woke up the next morning feeling like his father. It was almost enough to push him over the edge.

* * *

 

"You know this is enough to push me over the edge."

"But it won't…"

Dumbledore's slapdash optimism (or was it nonchalance?) had always made Snape's skin crawl with prickly irritation. "Do not presume to tell me what will and will not push me over the edge. You haven't been traversing all over the country looking for signs of upheaval," Snape snapped across from the Headmasters desk the following evening. "I could barely walk the distance from the apparation point to my chambers last night. The ache was unbearable."

"Perhaps you should visit the hospital wing? A young man in his prime such as yourself should not be having the arthritic pains of an old coot such as myself," Dumbledore said with an affectionate chuckle. Snape folded his arms and gave a look so dark that he could very well have just summoned over their heads his own portable storm cloud.

"That is not funny."

"If you can't laugh at these things, Severus, what can you do? What can you do?" Dumbledore repeated the second part of his sentence in the most serious tone Snape had heard since their meeting had begun. The two men sat in respectful silence for at least a minute… the elder sipping a cup of lemon tea and the younger glaring at the wall, wishing he'd finish the damn thing so that they could have a proper discussion.

"If this is my prime…" Snape mused out loud. He had to say these things to someone – he would have gone mad long ago if Dumbledore hadn't been there to be his verbal punching bag; he would not dare to lower his guard to anyone in the whole world bar the crazy old Headmaster.

"You should be proud of what you are doing for the Wizarding world; if it is your 'prime' that you sacrifice – it is for the greater good."

Snape was truly infuriated now. "'Greater good'! What is this greater good you constantly speak of? There has been no major dark wizard activity ever since You Know Who… ever since I turned spy for you," Snape stumbled on those words – the memory still too painful after all these years. "My impact on the Wizarding world is nought. There is absolutely no point visiting key wizarding haunts every week and merely _waiting_ for something to happen – it is something I do not need, nor is it something you need. I shall have no further part in it unless you order me to perform something constructive and _useful_."

"It is constructive and useful, Severus, though you may not think so. Do you not think preventative measures are preferable over aggressive ones?"

"Of course. However-"

"However nothing," Dumbledore said with a knowing glint in his eye. "I am sure that you know what happens next year don't you?"

_How could I bloody forget?_

Dumbledore seemed to catch on to his thoughts as he nodded without further explanation. He had won, as he always did, and he knew that Snape knew it. It could not have been any other way… Snape's entire life had revolved around virtual slavery to others; he took endless orders from Dumbledore, did everything he had ever demanded of him, brewed whatever Potions were required for the hospital wing, in preceding years he had done everything the Dark Lord had demanded, he had remained at that God-forsaken Spinners End for decades too long to ensure that his mother didn't commit suicide while within the depths of her clinical depression – a condition he could never afford to be afflicted with – and to make certain that Tobias's habitual explosions were targeted upon he himself, and not her… all of this, naturally, perpetually unappreciated by all parties.

Dumbledore had won. Like everyone else. That didn't make the aches all over Snape's body the least better at all, though.

"You are not like your father, Severus."

Snape leaned slowly back in his chair and absent-mindedly popped a lemon sherbet in his mouth – wishing immediately after that he hadn't… the sickly, fizzing sugariness of the damn thing nearly burned his oesophagus away.

"I am spending my life being a worthless, pathetic waste of space. I think that you will find that counters your estimation rather suitably."

Dumbledore shook his head in apparent amazement. "My boy, if that is the way that you force yourself to feel then it is so." It wasn't exactly the reassurance that Snape was looking for, but then again he shouldn't, and nor did he want to, expect anything else from the Headmaster; arse-kissing sycophants were not held in high esteem by Severus Snape. He crunched down the rest of the offensive sweet in an agonising fashion and pushed the chair out from the desk.

"I shall see you tomorrow at breakfast, Headmaster."

"Very well, my boy. Perhaps you should go to the hospital wing while you're up. These pains don't sound at all fitting even for me, not to mention a thirty year old."

"I am quite capable of taking care of myself, I have done so all my life." _Besides, let us not make an even stronger similarity between Tobias and myself through developing various chemical dependencies_. _The nightly Draught of Peace is bad enough_. Snape thought bitterly.

He left the Headmasters office without another word.

* * *

 


	2. Snape's Aneurysm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The teachers prepare for the arrival of a particularly interesting student. It is just the start of a string of headaches for one Severus Snape.

**Snape's Aneurysm.**

The staff room was jam-packed for the faculties weekly staff meeting the following Friday afternoon. From his standing place behind a seat containing the air-headed Queen Professor Trelawney, Snape counted far more heads then were normally present… Hagrid for one, Irma Pince for another, Filch, even Mrs. Norris had found her away onto a high table where she sat glaring at all the adults in that annoyingly haughty cat-like fashion. Snape glared right back at her.

"Thank you for all attending," Dumbledore began as everyone settled down in the staff room's various low-slung chairs, tattered couches or against the walls; he coughed loudly and a chattering Professor Vector got the hint. "As you all may or may not know, as of the next school year we have a rather… distinctive student joining Hogwarts ranks-"

Snape mentally groaned. He knew Dumbledore would draw severely unnecessary attention to that blasted Potter boy's arrival at the school.

"… Harry Potter," Dumbledore continued, a few of the teachers looked around at one another in apparent anticipation. "- Will be commencing his educational experience with us in the coming term. Now this is not the only focus of our meeting here, of course, but I wish to express my request that you try not to treat him differently from any other student at this school. Arrangements must also be made for one of our staff to collect him in September – as I am of the opinion that the Muggles he resides with are not going to be… overly enthusiastic of the big news."

 _So much for treating him like any other student,_ Snape thought. _Tirades of Muggleborn students have been faced with the same problem for hundreds of years and yet I do not see the Headmaster hosting a meeting for every single one of those!_

The meeting laboriously continued. The subject fortunately moving away from Potter and what special arrangements must be made to ensure that he didn't get any special arrangements made or some kind of ridiculous oxymoronic gibberish – and to the more formal matters dealing with the end of term and the commencement of exams, and the appointment of a new Muggle Studies Professor while Professor Quirrell would be moved to the Defence Against the Dark Arts department ( _Surprise, surprise. Merlin forbid the Headmaster give the post to someone who actually wants and would be good at the damn job for once_ , Snape grimaced). It appeared, though, that most of the non-academic faculty had merely arrived to hear some juicy news about Harry Potter – as one by one they were excusing themselves quietly from the staff room, looking rather disappointed. When the meeting had finished only Hagrid had remained and was now following the Headmaster out of the staff room.

Without warning, another bolt of lightning shot its way through Snape's body from his feet to the very top of his cranium. _Fuck these aches!_ He shouted internally, which only seemed to amplify the pain now dancing and doing gymnastic flips around his head. He inconspicuously darted around the remaining teachers and quickly sat down on a chair to compose himself. The chair annoyingly did not bring much relief to his muscles… but perhaps there was something else that just might…

"Prepared for exams, Severus?" Minerva McGonagall, Head of Gryffindor, asked briskly from the seat next to him that he unfortunately did not see her sitting in before he chose to set himself down. Though he supposed she was the most favourable person in room… well…

"But of course I am. I was prepared at the beginning of September, Minerva." Snape replied shortly, massaging his temple. "More importantly, are you ready to hand the Quidditch Cup over to us for the sixth year in a row?"

McGonagall gave a thunderous scoff… it was a good thing that Snape's smirk was covered by the hands that currently rested upon his temples, otherwise he was sure that she would have throttled him. "You _know_ the last Cup your house gained was won under many unnoticed fouls!"

"Oh! In that case, you may take the trophy from Slytherin's cabinet immediately."

He was swiftly rapped on the shoulder by a rolled up Daily Prophet. When Snape didn't continue to contribute to their customary daily teasing, McGonagall frowned. "Everything alright, Severus?"

"Quite wonderful." Snape said from his hands, determining the end of the conversation. McGonagall did not press and went back to her newspaper.

"Really, Minerva, how many points have you taken from Slytherin this time?"

Both Snape and McGonagall instantly snapped their heads upwards to see the chocolate-haired Astronomy Professor, Aurora Sinistra, standing across the room preparatory to exiting it - a smirk playing upon her face.

"You know Severus can't mentally handle more than a twenty point deduction at one time, I mean look at him, he's an emotional wreck!" she gave a lazy gesture in his general direction. Snape dropped his hands from his head immediately. As much as he loathed Aurora (and he did - Merlin he did), he could not deny that she was the very same woman he had intended to search for later.

"Haven't you got a Sinistra's Comet you can dash off to and discover?" he bit tetchily, not wanting to have any sort of conversation with the Astronomy teacher in front of the Head of Gryffindor - their conversations were generally shortened to one of two things: insulting the heck out of each other... and the other thing.

McGonagall tutted at his blatant discourtesy to a fellow staff member. "How was your practical class last night, Professor?" she asked politely.

Aurora shrugged. "Generally well received. Though a few of the students had slight trouble locating elliptical galaxy M87 and establishing the various causes of its radiating high-energy particles… though I'm quite certain they'll be well versed in it now I've set a good _hard_ six inches of homework on it."

Snape's hand gave an involuntary twitch. Thankfully it was a small and unnoticeable one.

"Would you come to lunch with me, Minerva?" Aurora continued cheerily. "I was thinking that instead of being locked in our respective offices we could construct our exam plans for the first to fourth years together."

"A splendid idea. I was to beginning to feel uncomfortably famished." McGonagall replied with gusto, pushing herself up from the chair. "Would you like to join us, Severus?"

_No, thank you Minerva, I'd rather staple my clothes to myself than sit and be forced to chat to Borealis._

"No, thank you Minerva, I must get back to the Potions lab… the Pepper-Up Potions for Madame Pomfrey will spoil if they're not stirred."

"Very well. And speaking of Pomfrey…" McGonagall said with a certain concern in her voice. "… Perhaps you should head over to the hospital wing yourself to see about that headache."

Her request was almost touching, but before Snape could object Aurora interjected: "Minerva, that was exactly what I was about to say! Severus - meet me after lunch and we'll go and see about that headache. I'm in need of relief myself, actually."

The skin around the edge of his collar began to feel prickly and hot. "Indeed? Well. That is convenient."

Both females nodded in satisfaction - but only one pair of eyes were met.

When McGonagall's back was turned (the staff room now entirely empty) the younger woman turned directly in front of the Potions Master and gave a great mocking theatrical jolt. _Fuck. So it wasn't as small and unnoticeable as he once thought._

"That had NOTHING to do with your disgusting innuendos, you shrew!"

"Don't have an aneurysm, Snape." Aurora smirked. "And whatever do you mean by innuendo? I think the fact that my innocent chatter to Minerva can single handedly make you writhe about in a series of convulsions proves that you need a hobby more than anything else. One hour." she rushed out before he could get a single retort in.

Snape's face turned almost fire-engine red with anger - to the passerby he would have looked ridiculously comical; well, for the few seconds before he cursed them into oblivion, that was.

* * *

 


	3. Chemical Peace

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aurora pushes Severus's buttons, and it could not come at a worse time…

**3\. Chemical Peace**

The lunch, featuring a delicious chicken stew, was one of the most tedious drawn-out lunches featuring a delicious chicken stew Aurora Sinistra had ever attended. The first hour had started out rather less tedious when Minerva was present, but then she had excused herself from their discussions on next years lesson plans and curriculum pathways (as much as Sinistra adored her very good friend, conversations with her ex-teacher were not exactly the most casual of natters… she had Professor Vector for that anyway) and returned to her class - to attempt to enrich minds that, in ninety-nine per cent of cases, were far more preoccupied with discovering just how much members of the opposite sex had developed in certain biological parts over the school year. At least, that was what Sinistra had deduced from her own classes… though maybe the overt lusting amoungst the pubescent teenagers may have had something to do with the intoxicating environment in which Astronomy was conducted. At least, it seemed intoxicating to them… to Aurora, the shimmering, iridescent starlight was nothing more than pure physics.

Just as Sinistra's face was about to fall, well… face first, into her bowl from the sheer tediousness of staring at the wall for the remaining forty-five minutes of her spitefully long lunch, Minerva's vacated seat gave a thunderous crack.

"Long night up on the tower was it?"

Sinistra looked up, and then up again, and then up again, to see the ever-welcoming face of another good friend of hers.

"Oh, Hagrid, don't even ask."

Secretly, she did want him to ask. It would give her at least another ten minutes. The gamekeeper chuckled affectionately and poured himself a glass of pumpkin juice, which, in saucepan-sized hands, was no simple feat. The juice splashed into Sinistra's stew where it settled like a stratum of oil.

"Oh, er, sorry 'bout that Professor…"

"It's fine. You know pumpkin juice goes surprisingly well with chicken." Sinistra replied, lazily swishing her wand and clearing the spilled juice from the table. "How have you been, Hagrid?"

"Well, here an' there, here an' there. About ter head off to clear some weeds that are disruptin' Professor Sprout's greenhouses. Pesky things. Anyway, yer dun need to be listening ter me drone on 'bout that!" Hagrid chuckled. "I'm sure yer have much more important things yer'd rather be doing, or listenin' too."

"Well, I certainly have no one I'd rather be listening to." Sinistra replied truthfully, leaning back and casually crossing her legs the other way.

"Aw, thanks Professor!"

"Please," Sinistra flicked away his praises in her ill-deserved direction with her hand. Then, suddenly, she was struck with another brilliant idea.

"Hagrid…?"

* * *

 

The door to the Potions storeroom blasted open with the vehement force of a thousand warriors.

"You bastard."

Without even flinching, Severus Snape turned slowly around from his place in the far corner of the store to find a panting Sinistra framed in the doorway – it was only then when his eyes widened in surprise at her physical state.

"What on earth…"

The dim candlelight of the storeroom did not paint the Astronomy professor in a very appealing light. Her hair was matted with dirt and all sorts of vegetation, her crimson robes were dishevelled and soiled at the hem. She attempted to blow away a small piece of fluxweed from her face, when it had rebelliously decided to detach itself from the curl of her brown hair, but there it still hung in front of her murderous eyes.

"What the devil happened to you?" Snape demanded.

"What the hell happened to _you_? I have been looking for you everywhere!" Sinistra countered.

Snape smirked nastily and walked slowly towards the door. "I think the fact that you look and smell like an upright pile of compost would make for a far more interesting answer."

Sinistra's hands and teeth clenched in frustration.

"Weeding."

"Weeding?"

"Yes, weeding! I was helping Hagrid. Because that is what decent people do – they help other people. Something you would know absolutely nothing about, being a selfish and completely self-absorbed upright pile of git."

No need to confess that she had only done so to make Snape and sit and squirm for an extra half hour.

Snape's eyes flicked from the psychotic woman to the door. With a swish of his wand the door slammed shut on its hinges.

" _Don't have an aneurysm_ , Borealis."

Sinistra suddenly gave an unexpected howl of laughter. Indeed, Snape had not expected it either – he gave a look of extreme bemusement.

"Okay…" she explained, clapping her palms together. "This is a revenge game you're playing, I see. I could've waited and weeded with Hagrid until sunset and you wouldn't have turned up at my quarters just to spite yourself."

"And once again, you are mistaken as always." Snape said silkily. "I waited an hour. You never showed. I left. I have absolutely no time for your idiotic games… we have an arrangement, not a playful amity."

"We don't have any sort of amity, thank you."

"Exactly. Which was why I left and took an analgesic potion to relieve my headache instead."

Sinistra leant back against the wall and sniffed amusedly as she watched the Potions Master turn back to labelling his stock. "Was that as fun?" she teased.

"It achieved a tolerably corresponding outcome. Fun doesn't come into it."

"And what about _my_ needs? You know very well the rules of our procedure – it is a two way street."

Snape momentarily ceased his re-stocking, as if actually stopping to consider her side of the story for once. "Well… you..." he said in an almost whisper with his back still turned. "… you could just-" but then he cleared his throat and suddenly and decidedly changed course, "I could make you a tonic for any ailment that currently troubles you."

Sinistra allowed herself a transitory grin, which she dropped immediately when he turned in her direction and moved to another shelf. "I think you're smart enough to know there isn't a potion available for what I want."

Sinistra took great pique to being refused her means. The arrangement that they had developed over the years out of the pure physical necessity of two busy professionals had been a sanity saving gift to Aurora; they had never wanted each other, not in that way at least – they had been friends once, but no longer. They merely used each other now in order to attain their means. It was a very precise, very anodyne collaboration that emanated 'true Slytherin' from every self-sufficient pore. The scientist in her termed it a facultative symbiosis. Extraordinarily quixotic stuff…

Snape smoothly nudged her out of the way as he reached for a something above her head, a few clinks and clunks of various glass bottles and he had pulled out a vial of what looked merely like syrup. Even though Aurora had a good inkling of what it was, she couldn't help but feel the need to aggravate her fellow Slytherin colleague.

"Maple syrup? Let's not get innovative, Severus."

Snape's upper lip rose in an unamused sneer. "When you are quite finished being the lewd wanton that you are, you should follow me… actually…"

Halfway through opening the door, he caught her eye and suddenly stopped.

"What?" Sinistra demanded, but Snape paid no attention and walked slowly toward her. He was about to go back on his word and fuck her right in the middle of the storeroom to save himself the trouble of brewing a potion… the selfish git.

"I've been needing some of this for a while…"

Well, she was thoroughly confused now. Saying something like that was not like him at all. Actually, saying anything whilst acting out their arrangement was not like him at all – that was, in actuality, the best part of the arrangement.

"I didn't get around to asking Professor Sprout for it." he added. 

_… what the fuck?_

And then he swiftly picked the fluxweed out of her hair and shoved it into his pocket.

"Follow me." He instructed again. "But don't you dare walk next to me – people will start thinking that we're friends."

Sinistra strangled the air behind his back.

* * *

 

The Potions classroom was almost pitch black when the two Professors stepped into it; the only light in the entire room was coming from the flames currently licking at the bottom of what appeared to be a large cauldron. It was so icy cold that Sinistra could almost feel the walls shivering. With an indolent swish of his ebony wand, Snape lit the torches against the wall and stormed up to the bubbling cauldron, where he rook out the vial of syrup and turned to the large clock situated upon the wall in front of him.

"Thirty seconds. I never thought I was going to make it back in time to save this potion thanks to your blab-fest in my storeroom."

Sinistra scoffed and sat down on one of the student's desks so aggressively that the chair behind it toppled hopelessly over and hit the stone ground. "Is there a reason for dragging me here? Or can I go and mark my fifth-year's assignments and try to forget that you ever accosted me against the wall with a bottle of maple syrup?"

"I think you ought to take care of your hygiene first. Unless, of course, your hair wishes to open up shop as an Apothecarist – by all means, it would save me from making countless trips to Diagon Alley."

"My hygiene? Pot. Kettle."

Snape paid no more attention to her. He stood with his back to the door and continued to watch the clock. Sinistra could appreciate the precise way in which he worked… though Potions was a subject nothing like Astronomy in theory, accurate and meticulous principles had to be utilised in order to be remotely successful in both. After only a few seconds, he popped open the vial and added it, drop by sticky drop, into the cauldron. Sinistra was almost mesmerised by the way he worked… as much as she hated the ground he walked on, there was no denying that he was something of a genius. It was a fact that never failed to annoy her.

"Hellebore…" Sinistra chimed in from the back of the classroom. "You're giving me a Draught of Peace?"

"For a person who just barely scraped an Acceptable in her NEWT Potions class, I am impressed." Snape replied as he began to stir the concoction. "Ten points to Slytherin. I was brewing it anyway, so don't presume that this is any sort of special favour in your direction."

"And what if I were a Gryffindor?" Sinistra teased, jumping up from her sitting position. "Actually - as civil a gesture as it is for you to put in the effort of scraping a couple of ounces of Potion from the cauldron for me - I think I'll pass on that Draught, thanks… and find a less chemically-dependent way to get by…"

It was the first time Snape had snapped his head in her direction since they had entered the room, and it was clearly the suspicious way in which she eyed the elixir that set him off like a firework.

"What are you insinuating?" he barked angrily. "That I am reliant on this? That I have no other means of escape? Just because I am Potions Master, it does not automatically mean that I abuse my abilities!"

"Severus, I never said-!"

"You didn't need to _say_!"

Merlin, she had never met anyone so defensive in her life… it was only through his severe reaction to her casual remark that Sinistra noticed just how sizeable the quantity of liquid swimming around in the cauldron really was; he had must have been brewing this hours before they had even arranged to meet.

"Why are you brewing so much of the stuff then?" she knew before the words left her mouth that this was a mistake. Severus did not have a long fuse, and it appeared that he was rather… particularly tetchy about this particular topic. 

"Because…!" he halted in mid-sentence, his chest now rising up and down feverishly. "Because I _store_ it, you stupid woman! I don't guzzle the entire thing at once like some kind of junkie!"

"Don't talk to me like that! Merlin's beard!" Sinistra bit back with equal fervour. "I was about to ask why you'd need to brew the damn thing at all, but I can clearly _why_ you're so addicted to it!"

Before Sinistra could interfere or impede his reaction, Snape placed his fingers around the rim of the hot cauldron and toppled it from its stand. The great big thing came crashing down upon the ground - where the clear, steaming liquid came rushing along the floor toward the horrified Astronomy teacher, who gave a short yelp and jumped back to the very back of the classroom. It was not enough distance… she could feel the hot fluid burning against the suede of her black boots.

"What, Aurora? Expecting me to get down on my hands and knees and lick it up so you can have a good giggle?"

But the look on Aurora's face was not one of amusement, not even anger. It was a look of sheer panic. Her hand gripped onto the door handle so hard that she felt the blood drain from her arm. The colleagues stood looking at each other for a few seconds, both panting as hard as the other - both, now, with looks of horror on their faces.

"Say something!" Snape demanded, as if, for once, he could not bear to have the upper hand.

Aurora shook her head defiantly; she was certainly not going to give him the satisfaction of feeling better about what he just did, she didn't care enough. Shaking droplets of chemical peace from her boot - she casually shut the door behind her with an undramatic click, and was quite out of earshot when the sound of shattering glass ricocheted from within the walls of the very same classroom.

* * *

 


	4. Quirinus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Deep in the forests of Albania, a young and newly appointed Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher is offered a very special task.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've always been curious about the occurrences between Quirrell and Voldemort just before he returned to Hogwarts from his sabbatical. I figured since I was writing a story centring on the lives of the teachers during the Philosopher's Stone timeline, then this would be the perfect place to do so. 
> 
> I really enjoyed writing this. I'm not all that great at descriptive pieces where a thorough study of the environment is needed (I thrive on dialogue and human interactions), so this was a wonderful challenge.

**4\. Quirinus.**

The mountains were virtually indistinguishable in the heart of the night. They loomed above the ramshackled town of the outer parts of Maliq like two black portals into the nameless, as the stars flickered around their borders.

The dilapidated tavern on the mountainside made no intrusion upon the environment… the environment seemed to be claiming it for its own. Its edges were fuzzy with moss and weeds and its low ceilings were enveloped in damp and occasional stain or two which would have left many a patron wondering of its origin if they hadn't been the sort who didn't really tend to 'wonder'. You had the odd local in here who always appeared to be welded into the bar stool in which they were sitting; due to the tavern's distance from the major Albanian industrial centres, however, these were few and far between.

It was a Muggle inn. Which would explain the odd looks the man in the far corner of the bar was getting from the two regulars sitting at the idle fireplace. He had been getting ever since he set up here last week.

Quirinus had been very careful thus far in shadowing his true nature from the locals… he had packed and dressed in only Muggle clothes, and unlike many magic folk who normally possessed no concept on how to put a Muggle outfit together and pull it off without hearing distant sniggers from the very people they were trying to imitate, he did it very well. It was expected of him. He studied them. He taught his students of them… well… he used to.

Unfortunately, it wasn't that simple. The poorer men around these hills dressed very differently than what Quirinus was used to, and no more had it shown than the time he walked into his place for a quiet drink and a sit down.

While consciously avoiding their gazes (and the far more agreeable one of the greatly younger barmaid… obviously a family business), the young Professor slipped an envelope out of his jacket pocket and ran his finger along the rough crease of it, pulling out it's content and folding the envelop reading: _"Prof. Q. P. Quirrell, KreuI Gjarprit, Maliq, Korçë County, Albania_ " back into the coat. Flipping open its contents he ran through a rather brief note regarding the minutes of a start-of-term staff meeting that he had fortunately missed, and attached to that was three pages describing a few changes to the Defence Against the Dark Arts syllabus (obviously remnants of what Quirinus missed in the traditional one-to-one meeting with the Headmaster at the beginning of every year). He sighed, took a final swig of the Muggle ale, nodded politely to the pretty blonde barmaid who he only just realised was still gaping at him, and exited the inn.

It was a quarter to midnight, and he very well should have retired to his bed… but there was research to be done. The warm August air was uncomfortably humid, even at this high latitude. As the young man began to scale the smaller mountain he swung his jacket off and around his shoulders, trailing further and further into the dark abyss of the towering trees above him. He had trailed most of the world in his one year sabbatical from Hogwarts… it was the first time he had ever done such a thing. Muggles were easier to study locally, and only his advanced seven year Muggle studies students focused on differing Muggle cultures to the one's in Britain, so there was never any need to 'explore his art' as it were.

It soon became clear to him that the course of the mountain was taking a painfully steep turn, and he thought it best to stop and sit for a while, survey his surroundings and look for any movement.

During his travels Quirinus had come into contact with many different wizarding communities… and there was a general consensus (or perhaps more accurately, a rumour, but it was a very popular rumour and therefore a rumour that deserved a thorough investigation) that lately there had been a lot of Dark activity in these far placed forests of the Korçë County in Albania. Wizards of neighbouring countries has informed him of various suspicious creatures spotted here, in the very environment in which he now sat with his notebook, scribbling down his recent observations. The rumours spoke of Vampires, Werewolves, Yeti's, to the less believable ones of Nundu's, Ukrainian Ironbelly's and even Acromantula's – these of which, as Quirinus had spent months investigating, were absolutely no where to be found in Albania. From his research within the area – he suspected it was merely a colony of excrement-stirring Ghouls.

" _Lumos_."

He stood with his wand ignited for a few minutes, observing the territory; after a while he noted in his book that he had been nothing to report.

He moved upward. There were stops every hour and new notes explaining that there was nothing to note were added. The odd rustling of branches served as the only excitement of the night, followed by a fall in the pit of the Professor's stomach as a random selection of marsupial or amphibian or reptile hopped/jumped/slithered out of it's branches. The oddest occasion must have happened at around two in the morning, nearing the peak of the hill, when he observed a very slow and disinhibited petite snake glide past his foot, where it promptly curled up and died about a metre from where he stood. Quirinus stood with his wand trained on the thing for a moment, feeling a tad nervous that it was about to morph into something else and getting ready to leg it… but after a few minutes of stillness he was quite certain that the thing had passed on.

He made a small note. Just in case.

" _Nox_."

He sighed and shook his head in disappointment, though his gut was telling him that it was probably for the best that he hadn't come across anything too nasty. He would try again tomorrow and then he would head to Scotland once more… with nothing but a few interesting stories and two happy memories of two anonymous witches he had happened across on his travels – maybe two witches and a Muggle girl if this young barmaid and her immodest staring was anything to go by…

_Professor Q. P. Quirrell…_

A voice? A voice! A voice that knew his name!

" _Lumos_!" Quirinus shouted, whipping around in all directions at once, eyes fluttering around the trees like a man committed. "Who's there?" he demanded, a slight faltering in his voice. "Show - show yourself!"

He could not see anything in this light, but the almost-nothingness he _could_ see revealed naught to him.

Then… it could have been the mere whistle of the wind… but he heard a distant laugh - a very malicious one at that, one certainly not synonymous with amiable intentions. A change of tactic, methinks… "

 _"Nox_." He whispered yet again. And then he ran. He ran as quietly as a man could run, but he ran. He was not a courageous man - he was a smart man.

But he didn't get very far.

There was a definite snapping noise as his head smacked against the forest floor, Quirinus fought against the several black spots that appeared in his line of vision as the pain seared through the back of his skull. He sat up as quickly as his pain tolerance would allow and made to leap into action once again, before he realised that the… _voice_ or whatever it was hadn't tripped him… he had slipped. Quirinus breathed a refreshing sigh of relief despite the mega-migraine that he was now budding, and he also decided that he ought to continue running anyway – the voice could be gaining distance on him second by second. Quirinus leant back and pushed himself up with one hand and held his pounding head with the other, feeling something rather odd and out of place in his grounded palm as he did so. He picked the papery substance off the ground… this must've been what he slipped on… rather an odd coincidence that someone else had been up here and left a pike of rubbish in the same place that he… mind you… it felt awfully familiar…

As Quirinus almost subconsciously began scaling down the mountainside at a hurried pace once more, he tried to catch the paper in the moonlight to see what it was (he daren't use Lumos, that was for sure) – though he was speeding through the woodland so fast that light passed over the object as quickly as Muggle transport vehicles on those busy motorways that they were constricted to. He decided he could afford to stop under a streak of light for just a few seconds to see exactly what the paper read… there was no audible sign of anything giving chase to him at any rate.

By Merlin, it was a piece of parchment. An envelope, in fact… and it had been ripped at the edges and was covered in a sticky, stringy substance that he absolutely had no intention of investigating. The Hogwarts crest was stamped onto the back of it.

Quirinus's stomach turned almost simultaneously as he turned over the envelope in his hands. And it dropped to his feet when he saw the inked address on its front.

_Prof. Q. P. Quirrell_

_KreuI Gjarprit, Maliq_

_Korçë County_

_Albania._

His personal prowler must've gotten his name from this. He must've dropped it on the way up here… far too foolish for comfort! Quirinus angrily shoved the thing back into his pocket and made a speedy walk down the rockier parts of ground that were appearing all around him; he certainly didn't wish to trip on that kind of terrain.

_Professsssssor…_

" _LUMOS_!" the light of his wand blazed angrily once again. "I- I DEMAND TO KNOW… TO KNOW WHO Y-YOU ARE AND WHY YOU ARE FOLLOWING ME!" he shouted in a failed attempt to sound intimidating.

There was a moment of eerie stillness, save for Quirinus's rapid panting and the crusty sound of leaves touching in the airstream that bustled above. "Who are you!" he cried desperately again. Oh, how he wished he had stayed in the Muggle studies department now! He didn't think it fitting for a future Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher to be standing here and have panic rip all knowledge of what he should be doing away…

A rustling in a nearby shrub compelled the petrified teacher to train his glowing wand on it… when he did so, he made an odd sound that could only be described as a cross between a yelp and a yell. A snake was twisted around the branches that loomed over the shrub it was obviously previously hiding in… it must've only been a meter and a half or so long… but the way it twisted and coiled… and the way it was… it was actually _looking_ at him… it struck fear into the very core of his being. There was something in its eyes that gave it away.

"Am I… am I speaking Parseltongue?" he asked the serpent, despite all bodily functions screaming at him to escape. He would have bet a hundred Galleons that the snake had just given him a shake of the head.

_You are not worthy of the ancient Tongue of Snake, Professor Q. P. Quirrell of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. But you will be in the very immediate and imminent future. You will be._

It spoke as if it were living inside the chamber of his skull, it was almost as if the sound of its voice were bypassing his ears completely.

"… what?" he asked weakly, his legs about to give way. "But can I understand you…?"

 _I am merely a possession. My feeble body, my true form, cannot sustain itself_. The snake's head danced in organised movement as if in mid-conversation. _I embody the essence of these serpents, deep in this forest… I have done so for many years now. I have been waiting most patiently._

Quirinus gulped. Ice cold shivers dripped all the way down his spine. He began slowly drawing backward… though he had no idea how he could escape a voice that seemed to essentially dwell within his own brain. Maybe he needed his head checked at St. Mungo's upon his return to Britain…

 _But why the hesitation, Professor Quirrell of Hogwarts?_ The snake voice asked. _I am offering you the most precious task, the most precious contribution, in Wizarding history._

"You… you are?" Perhaps if he kept the thing talking, he could make a break for it.

_But where will you run, I wonder? And how long will it take before you realise that now… you can never escape?_

Quirinus had to take a split second to distinguish the snakes voice to his own thoughts, and another split second to attempt to subdue the feeling of rising panic… it was reading his mind! He apparated away to the area just outside the inn. But… there was no familiar feeling that usually came with this mode of transport. To Quirinus's utter horror, after he opened his eyes he was still fixed in the same place. He tried again and again and again. Apparition never came. And the creature was watching him with what could only be described as a look of extreme… amusement? Could a snake do that? Well, of course it could! If it could talk and read minds, Quirinus didn't even know why on earth he was _questioning_ its facial expressions…

There was no other choice – he ran. He ran downward and downward, faster and faster until it felt like he was flying… and then he was flying; he flew for approximately one and a half seconds before his whole body came crashing down upon the grass, where it then proceeded to roll head over heels, flesh tearing on the pointed branches and occasional jagged rock. He did finally come to a halt when he crashed side-first into a particularly colossal stump, but he did not remain stationary for long. He could hear a distant but strong rustle of leaves behind him and knew it was giving chase, and that it was also getting closer by the second. Quirinus stood himself up and his left leg instantaneously exploded into a million fiery pinpoints of pain. He gave an inexorable deafening shriek as the inferno advanced up to his hip and forced him down onto the ground once more; his flight mechanism still unable to be quenched, he now began crawling, dragging his palpably fractured ankle behind him. It was then that the thing finally struck.

This time he gave a scream that was so ear-splitting he was positive that it would have alerted someone in the inn to his location deep within the woods. He pulled out his wand and twisted his body so that he was facing upward and looking down on the beast that had attached its fangs onto his broken and pulsating ankle, blood was pouring out around its teeth and pooling in his shoes. He gave one feeble kick at the thing with his intact foot and when he established that it was obviously futile, he shouted out as many curses as his hastily deteriorating, pain-riddled brain could recall. Beams of light and sparks hit the snake that clamped down upon him. Just as the edges of Quirinus's vision began to go black, its grip began to loosen… and after a few more beams of green light had hit its body, it has completely detached itself and fallen onto the grass beside him – still as the seabed.

"Oh…" Quirinus moaned as a throbbing chronic pain took hold of his lower half as opposed to a fiery acute one. He needed to drag himself down this hill as quickly as possible, and into the inn, and away from this possessed demon snake that lay deceased at broken ankle. Sweat pouring down his face, and pure fear the only thing preventing him from blacking out, he attempted to Apparate once more – and gave a considerably noisy bawl of frustration when the same result transpired. That the thing had been killed and still the Dark magic that surrounded this forest remained! He started to drag himself, half crawling, and half sliding, along the grassland.

He got as far as a couple of feet before he heard what sounded like swirling sand behind his ears. It was then that he knew he was about to die…

_Foolish servant. You can never escape Lord Voldemort._

Quirinus turned around barely briefly enough to catch a foretaste of the whirling transparent smoke that was seeping out of what looked like the dead serpents mouth. The shimmering air hung above its body and turned slowly, as if it were surveying him. He did not have the time to scream, nor to close his eyes and brace himself, as it soared towards him, bled into the corners of his eyes and wrapped its unyielding clutch on his soul.

* * *

 


	5. Substituting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aurora Sinistra is reluctantly awarded the title of Head of Slytherin. And Severus Snape is very reluctantly awarded the title of Astronomy professor for the night.

_1991._

September. The hallways were again littered with overly confident, hormonal, sexually revved-up teenagers. Oh, yay.

And her coffee was cold. Sinistra screwed up her face at the disappointing liquid… after a very rough afternoon, this was just the cherry on the top.

"Caffeine at eight in the evening?" a woman's voice radiated in the background as the staff room door shut behind her. "Someone has a death wish."

Sinistra looked up with a raised eyebrow. "Did you take a brain-vanishing potion today?"

Septima Vector, the Arithmancy professor, raised her head in theatrical acknowledgement. "Oh, right… the astronomy thing is probably easier at night."

The younger witch with a sharp blue-black bob, Aurora's closest friend, plonked herself down on the couch next to her, and rested her head on one of the cushions.

"So… did you kill all the third years with your syllabus yet?" Sinistra prompted as she walked over to the sink to wash her black mug.

"It's called weeding out the weak," Vector replied, her bright olive green eyes still gazing at the ceiling. "If I can get at least 20% of the kiddies to quit, it means less futile work for me." Sinistra smiled and made her own way over to the couch.

"Sometimes I wonder why you and I are here at all… our particular brands of magic are… specialised, to say the least."

"That's not 'resignation' talk again, is it? Honestly, you are the biggest drama queen I have ever had the misfortune to meet." Vector rested her boots on the coffee table in front of them. Sinistra often wondered if the woman had a split personality; for she was always so carefree and off-the-cuff with her peers, yet managed to still hold onto her reputation amongst the students of the school as one of the most strictest Professors.

"And leave you here all on your lonesome? Come now…"

Vector grinned and turned to face Sinistra for the first time. "Charity Burbage may have ended things with me, but that doesn't mean I'll end up 'all on my lonesome'…"

"At least _Charity_ saw sense." Sinistra shot her colleague a wily smirk.

The door flung open yet again, which prevented a riposte. Professor Snape took one look at the pair of them and walked straight back out again. "Charming…" Vector mused. "What do you see in him again, Aurora?"

"Believe me, less than you do. A means to an end."

"You must be _desperate_. You know I'm always available," Septima teased, poking Aurora hard in the arm as she did so. "And  _I_ come with the added benefits of being rather hilarious and a great drinking buddy."

 _I'll bear that in mind…_ Sinistra thought to herself, but kept herself quiet. Vector was the only other staff member in the school that knew anything of her and Severus's special arrangements – she would prefer it to stay that way. Ever since they had met they had shared pretty much whatever was on their mind. As far as she knew, she was the very first person who had asked the then brand new Arithmancy professor what the matter was when she saw her pacing about outside the castle's doors one glum afternoon. Vector had looked at her with a face full of tears and it was there that she finally became open about her feelings for a certain female Muggle studies colleague. They had been the best of friends ever since. Though Vector would always have the upper hand in suitable choice of partners.

"See you tomorrow morning," was the reply Aurora decided on as she pushed herself up off the low couch. She hurled the door open and stormed out without another glance behind her. ( _That poor door… it had taken its fair share of beatings over the course of her employment…_ )

* * *

 "Oi!" she yelled at the distant billowing black smudge currently making its way down the corridor and almost out of sight. The smudge stopped and turned.

"Whirlwind stop over in the staff lounge was it?" she continued yelling as Snape's face became clearer and clearer. It didn't look all that happy. (Though did it ever?)

"Had I possessed the foresight that you and Septima might have been in there nattering away like banshees, I would be as far away from that room as physically possible," he snarled, ensuring his voice was low enough to only be heard by the pair of them.

Sinistra was now an inch from his face. Her boots moved faster than her brain did, she was sure… "Your consideration is _tear-jerking_ …" she bit.

"I suggest next time that you lock the door. Or better yet, retire to the Owlery. I hear gaudy squawking is quite encouraged there." Snape retorted smoothly. 

Rage was bubbling up inside her. It was an all too familiar feeling when Snape was involved in the matter. Unfortunately, it was also… quite necessary. Sinistra blew an angry sniff through her nose and stormed away up a staircase, Snape followed, in silence, until they reached the higher level.

"Someone is apparently jealous that I can actually have _decent_ conversations with other human beings," Sinistra continued as she took out her wand and waved it violently at a large oak door; it swung open to reveal a darkened sitting room, illuminated by flickering lamps whose light bounced to and fro between the multiple telescopes that infiltrated the space.

"You assume that I, like she, concern myself with your satisfaction. I want no tête-à-tête with you." Severus replied from behind her, he followed her into the living area. 

"I can end this prearrangement anytime," Sinistra warned as they made their way into the bedroom, undoing the ties on her robes as she did so. "I would not be so foolhardy." Snape was already missing his colossal cloak and was currently working on the billions of buttons that sealed him away from the world.

"And whom else would you request to come and gratify you, may I ask? Cuthbert Binns? I would not put it past you, to be perfectly honest."

Sinistra was now spread-legged on the edge of her bed, drumming her fingernails impatiently on one of the oak posters. "You're bothering with those buttons? As if I'd want to see another unnecessary inch of your pallid physique. Yikes."

Snape gave an aggravated groan. "Very well, very well," he replied, giving up on his waistcoat and focusing on his trousers instead. "Quid pro quo: I would very much welcome you turning the other way – you know how much facing you puts me off…"

His colleague jumped up and shoved him. "Fucking prick!"

"Do you want to do this or not? Turn around!"

If he wasn't careful, he would find himself hanging out of the window after she was finished with him. She turned on all fours on the bed as Snape took a fistful of her hair and bent her down further. She hissed as she felt him penetrate her and used all the willpower available to her to imagine someone else in his place. And anyone, anyone but him, would do.

Aurora's head moved back and forth upon her bed sheets as his potent thrusts became more and more ferocious. It was not at all long before she felt the occasional sparks of fire within her erogenous regions transform into firecrackers… her nails dug aggressively into the mattress as she closed her eyes and began to moan.

The act between them never took very long. In fact, they'd both rather it was done quickly, but done well nevertheless. For them, it was no more intimate than eating together, or discussing NEWT exam results, or quarrelling. Ten minutes after they had stormed through the bedroom doors they were now storming out of it. "Don't be late next time," Sinistra commanded, doing up the button of her red wine coloured cloak. "I have a class to prepare for tonight."

"I will come to you whenever I damn well please!" Snape bit nastily. "I am not in this to be at your beck and call day and night. Drink."

He handed her a very small vial of purple coloured potion. Sinistra snatched it from him and took one quick swig, grimacing as the acidic taste coated her mouth and her throat. The potion was almost at vital as the act itself… Merlin knows what horrors would present themselves to her if she ever had to bear _that_ monstrosity's offspring.

"You know Severus," Sinistra mused casually as she watched him pour himself a goblet of water from the flask in her living area. "You seem particularly off-colour lately – not in the act like you usually are, I mean -" (Severus gave her a spectacular scowl at this over the rim of his cup) " – wouldn't have anything to do with a particular first year, would it?"

"You have been exposed to Neville Longbottom and his brain cell privation then?" Snape replied as he downed the rest of the water.

"You know very well that is not what I meant."

"My relationship with the students has nothing to do with you, I thank you."

"It does when you're angrier than usual," Sinistra smirked, as she handed him back the vial in which previously contained the contraceptive concoction. "You make a better toy when you're angry."

"Don't be vulgar."

"I just want to make sure it continues…"

"Oh, it will continue," Snape said darkly. "To your delight: I will be subject to seven glorious years of Potter related migraines."

"Do you think…" mused Sinistra, leaning against the back of the black leather couch, "… do you think there may be trouble ahead?"

Snape looked into her eyes for the first time that he had entered her quarters. "Concerned that I might be called away for a task?" he queried. with the slightest curl of his lip.

Sinistra looked positively disgusted. "You and your sentiments. I can keep myself amused."

He nodded and gently placed the goblet back upon the table, where it immediately sunk into nothingness, on its way to the Hogwarts kitchens. Sinistra saw him sneer, though he tried to hide it.

"If I don't have to wash up, I won't, thank you." Sinistra answered as if he had just given her a particularly wounding verbal blasting.

"Domestic duties are very clearly not your forte…" Snape retorted.

"Are you still here?"

With a very unamused raise of the eyebrow, he turned quickly on his heel and jerked open the door connecting to the castle's many hallways. He was half way out of her life until the next tryst, before he suddenly jumped all the way back in, slamming the door behind him. Aurora jumped.

"Shit!" he cursed. "Shit! Minerva's out there!" Sinistra's jaw could almost be heard hitting the floor. Five years of this, without anyone expecting a thing (save Septima), and now the idiot had just gone and shown himself to the deputy Headmistress, one person away from the individual who held hiring and firing power over their heads.

"Idiot!" Sinistra bit, shoving him aside and looking out of the peephole. "Are you sure? I can't see her."

"I'm the idiot?" Snape shot back underneath his breath. "She's not directly outside the _door_ , simpleton! She was at the end of the corridor!"

"Hopefully she didn't see you…"

"We'll certainly find out when we're both called to the Headmaster's office to explain ourselves." Snape, in turn, now pulled the Astronomy teacher away from the door so that he could observe. Sinistra fell against the back of the leather couch. The sheer adolescent-ness of the situation would have been hilarious if it wasn't so nerve-wracking. When the sudden knock at the door came, Snape ducked hastily under the peephole as if McGonagall's keen, sharp gaze could penetrate straight through. Sinistra shoved a finger toward the bedroom, toward which he followed.

She dusted herself off though there really was nothing to dust, and had almost opened the door before she realised that Snape's very distinctive black cloak was hanging over the back of her desk chair; she quickly wrapped it up in her arms and threw it into the bedroom after him.

"What if she knows you're here?" Sinistra mouthed furiously to the man now sitting on her bed looking quite dazed after being hit in the face with his own garments.

"I'll think of something." He assured.

"Coming out of my bedroom is not a very innocuous act that can explained away easily…" Aurora said in an odd mixture of whispering and shouting voicelessly. 

Snape mused on this.

"… Correct." he said quite simply, as if she had answered a question that he had shouted out in his class.

And so McGonagall was greeted with the both of them, instead of just one.

"Severus?" she exclaimed upon seeing the Potions master standing behind the only person she obviously expected to find in her quarters.

"I'm giving Severus a run down of my lesson plan for tonight," Sinistra explained without a beat. "I'm not feeling too well, and he has very kindly offered to substitute. Isn't that right, Severus?"

She could practically feel the burn of his glare on the back of her neck.

"… Yes." Came the short resentful reply.

"I see. I hope it is nothing too serious?" McGonagall enquired.

"You know me and my migraines…"

The elder witch gave a sympathetic glance. "Perhaps I should come back another time, then. I would suggest the hospital wing, Aurora –"

"No, it's fine," Sinistra stepped aside and opened the door further to allow her inside. "Severus has also very kindly made me an analgesic potion so we've gotten this plan sorted. Thanks again for that, Severus." She turned to the Potions master and gave him a courteous nod and raised eyebrow.

"You're welcome," he drawled.

"How can I help you, Minerva?" Sinistra continued politely. When McGonagall ailed to answer and continued glancing uneasily at Snape, she added, without so much as a glance at him: "that's all I have for you tonight, Severus. Oh, and you'll be needing these -"

She backed further into the living room and picked up several pieces of parchment upon her study desk. When she returned to the door she thrust them into Severus's hands. 

"Astronomy lesson plan, for tonight." She explained quite casually. "Now you may go. And thank you again."

It appeared that a great battle between morbid curiosity and common sense was unfolding beyond his eyes. Not that Sinistra was looking at his eyes; she just assumed from her peripheral vision. It seemed McGonagall was waiting for Snape's exit just as eagerly. Common sense won out, and Snape nodded his goodbye to the two women before disappearing around the door in a flash of black.

McGonagall watched the door for a few seconds before speaking again. "I thought Severus had a morning class tomorrow? I could have taken your class tonight."

"Oh no, you're far too busy for that. Besides I'll offer to take his Potions class tomorrow morning… I'm sure the students will throw me a parade."

 _Never crack co-worker jokes in front of Minerva…_ she reminded herself when she was answered with a very dispassionate look. Professor McGonagall merely gave a sharp nod, and made her way into the centre of the room. "I do apologize for disturbing you in the evening, especially when you are unwell - but Professor Dumbledore has asked me to give you these…"

She plonked the most massive pile of documents that Sinistra had ever seen on the coffee table.

"He apologizes that he could not deliver them personally, but he has some… rather important business to attend to."

"What's all this then?" Sinistra enquired.

"Slytherin business," McGonagall answered. "Slytherin fifth year careers meeting information and timetable, Slytherin common room budgets, Slytherin student timetables… I just thought I'd deliver them tonight to let you get an early attempt at it all."

"Isn't this Head of House business?" Sinistra politely informed, staring down at the massive pile with a horrified expression.

"It is, usually," McGonagall replied sympathetically. "The Headmaster does apologize for the extra work on your behalf, but he feels that Severus would not be physically able to handle administration on top of the extra work he has set for him this year. Unfortunately for you, you are the second most senior ex-Slytherin in this entire school… not counting the Bloody Baron, of course."

 _Then get the bloody Bloody Baron to do it! And what do you mean second most senior? Severus and I were in the same year, thank you very much… I just had the sense to not take the job._ Sinistra felt her entire years planning fly out of the window along with her social life.

"What work has Albus got Severus doing then?"

McGonagall gave a harsh shrug. "I am as clueless as you, I assure you. You are, of course, able to call on Severus to assist you if there are aspects of the budgeting you do not understand…"

Sinistra gave a short laugh, which she brilliantly was able to turn into a casual cough. Brilliant as it was, it was not going to fool such an impressive force as Minerva McGonagall.

"I assume Dumbledore forgot the memo that I'm also getting pay rise, then?" Sinistra continued, flagrantly.

"You can discuss that with him."

_If he'd ever show his face to me, then perhaps, yes._

"And seeing that Severus is no longer capable of his responsibilities, this means that I am now acting Slytherin Head of House?"

"You can discuss _that_ with Severus."

Sinistra liked that idea very much. If she was not going to scrape an extra few miserable galleons out of this, she could certainly find a few inspiring ways for Severus to pay off his debts. She gave a smirk and nodded in defeat. "Very well, if I must."

"Thank you kindly, dear. Believe me, working three roles as Deputy Headmistress, Head of Gryffindor and trying to keep all those insolent, dramatic teenagers under control – I know how it feels." McGonagall was indeed the strongest person she had ever had the pleasure in meeting, but her attempt to make Sinistra feel better did not work as well as it should; the elder witch was someone she revered, someone who was somewhat of an unattainable role model to her. In comparison, Sinistra was nothing short of those insolent, dramatic teenagers that she spoke so distastefully of.

Albus Dumbledore, in contrast, was a completely different story. It wouldn't be the Deputy Headmistress she would be having strong words with… it would be the direct source.

"I can certainly never compare myself to you," Sinistra answered. "I shall see you tomorrow, I expect."

McGonagall placed a long thing hand on her shoulder and gave it the quickest almost unnoticeable of squeezes. "Feel better. And I shall see myself out."

Sinistra watched her leave from the other side of the room. As soon as the door clicked shut she rolled her head back against the couch and gazed despondently at the high marble ceiling. Dumbledore… she could kill the man. If he wasn't putting food on her table and giving her a home for the majority of the year she would have a right mind to tell exactly what she thought of him in no uncertain terms.

At least Severus was always ripe for the verbal jousting, Head of House or not.

And at least _now_  she didn't feel quite so bad obliging him to substitute her class this evening…

* * *

_Bloody Aurora, bloody woman!_ _Quick thinking is clearly not up her alley!_ Snape's mind was biting his skull the entire way to his office as he clutched the Astronomy second year lesson plan for tonight's practical. As if he all the time in the world to gallivant around taking everybody's lessons here and there! If he didn't trust her with a shampoo bottle let alone leading a class in brewing an Essence of Dittany, she would be in that dungeon at six o'clock in the morning sharp, slicing up all of the ingredients before she could say Merlin.

He quickly unfolded the plan as he stormed down the hallway… _Observing the Magellanic Stream… ages of similar satellite galaxies… origins of the stream_ … Child's play. That was easy enough. He could get that done in under an hour. Thank Merlin it was not a NEWT level theoretical astrophysics class… he wasn't ashamed to admit that he was a bit rusty on that front.

He was quickly interrupted in his thoughts by the sound of hushed muttering coming from one of the not-so-empty classrooms. Assuming it to be a couple of trespassing students, Snape quietly approached the corner of the door which was parted barely a couple of inches. It was then that he heard a man's voice, radiating from inside.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm sorry! Please-"

Whimpering followed this sudden outburst. Snape frowned in concentration as he attempted to discern the identity of the speaker.

"I will be better… I will be stronger. I promise. I promise. Just, please, don't -"

The voice suddenly registered as that belonging to Quirinus Quirrell. Snape waited momentarily to hear any sort of riposte from whoever else occupied the room with him, but all that followed was the sound of weeping. He gave an appalled grimace and made to continue his way, no longer wishing to be witness to the sound of a grown man in tears any longer…

He was again, however, stopped in his tracks by what sounded like Quirinus muttering a quiet "please my Lord…"

He rushed back to the door and strained with all of his might to hear the end of that sentence, but to no avail. The spluttering has commenced again. A million thoughts spiraled through his mind at once, and at the forefront was the aspiration to follow the newly appointment Defence Against the Dark Arts professor for the remainder of that night to gather more information. The forming plan was fleetingly tarried as the sound of footsteps made their way to where Snape stood; he casually opened up the Astronomy lesson plan again and made his way to the other side of the corridor.

When Professor Quirrell caught his eye, and he damn well sure he made him catch his eye, Snape remained completely expressionless.

"Good evening," Snape greeted coolly – which he ensured sounded more like a threat than a pleasantry. He was very good at that.

Quirrell quickly rubbed his eye with his palm as Snape watched on. "Good – good evening, Severus. Damn allergies… heh… well, good night."

He hastily jogged down the hall and up the stairs and out of sight. Severus watched him depart with an intrigued frown. Quirinus was once a rather, if not confident man, certainly a poised one. A far cry from the man he had just observed spluttering in a classroom like some lovelorn fourteen year-old girl. Something had definitely disturbed him during his year long sabbatical… he would keep a close watch on this indeed.

Then he remembered that stupid class tonight; the mere thought of it cutting into the important business with Quirinus annoyed him all the more now. Perhaps he would get Professor Sinistra in his dungeon at the crack of dawn prepping all of his ingredients.

Well, she could certainly mop the floor at least…

* * *

 


	6. The Monthly Rounds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus visits Azkaban. Hagrid finds it impossible to stay true to his word. Aurora is still angry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry for the length of this, I just didn't quite know where to end it and it seemed to flow better this way. Hope it's not too much of a hard slog.

**6.**

The most gigantic pile of parchment anyone had ever seen came crashing down upon the Potions Master's desk.

"Fix this!" Sinistra demanded without so much as a nod in greeting.

Snape looked up from his test marking with a raised brow. "Excuse me?"

"That Albus Dumbledore!" she hissed through bared teeth. "A _month_ I've waited to even arrange a meeting with him, and he casually mentions over breakfast this morning that I have to wait until after Halloween! This means that until then I'm doing all of your stinking admin work that I never asked for, for not a Knut more than the salary I receive to actually do something I agreed to in a contract!"

Snape blinked rapidly in an apparent attempt to process all of this angry garble coming out of her mouth. "Say that again - but in the voice of a sane person, if you can manage." He instructed slowly.

Sinistra tapped a slender, wine coloured nail on the top of the parchment.

"Slytherin progress reports, Slytherin budgets, Slytherin Quidditch practice time slots, Slytherin, Slytherin, Slytherin!" she continued in her ranting. "See, the thing is: I made the choice to focus solely on Astronomy and to have nothing to do with running my former household. But now because _you're_ so bloody busy with Merlin knows what, I have no choice but to focus on mundane drudgery that makes me want to gouge my eyes out every second I take look at it. I'm not doing it anymore unless I get a big fucking paycheck for it like you do." She opened up her arms and shrugged. "I mean, that's only fair isn't it? I want my weekend free this time."

The out-of-action Head of Slytherin considered her crazed but plausible argument before pulling the pile toward him.

"Agreed," he confirmed quietly. "Until you discuss the ins and outs of this arrangement with the Headmaster then I will take the aforementioned drudgery off your hands. Merlin knows the only reason I took the job was for the money; it certainly isn't fair that no compensation was offered to you."

He swiped his arm across the desk, collected the monstrous pile of paperwork and placed it on his side of the desk. "Anything else?" he enquired as he picked up his quill again and dipped it into the black ink.

Sinistra merely looked down upon him, dumbfounded. She hadn't expected such an amiable response. Considering she hadn't a clue about the extra work thrust upon him by the management, she had to admit she was starting to feel a little guilty.

"What has the slave driver got you doing, then?" she asked.

"Confidential business, I'm afraid," he answered without looking up from ticking and crossing and making fast scribbles upon his students' works. Sinistra could have answered that before he did. It was always confidential when it came to Snape and Dumbledore.

"Look…" she pressed as gently as she could, "if you just tell me what it is then maybe I'd be a bit more understanding… you-"

"Would you like me to get you a dictionary for some light reading?" Snape bit back, snapping his gaze back toward her. Finally, he was back. Sinistra blew out a frustrated breath of air and pulled up a seat opposite him.

"I didn't say you could stay for tea and sandwiches," Snape informed her.

"I want to resign." Sinistra replied simply.

It was the first time any emotion had crossed though his face.

"What?" he commanded. "Why?"

"I've had enough of this school," she explained. "There are so many other things I could be doing to benefit both the wizarding and the Muggle community… physicists have vast opportunities in both worlds."

Snape shook his head and asked: "You aren't seriously suggesting that you become a _Muggle_ physicist, are you? _That's_ certainly not throwing your talent away…"

"What's the difference? I use no magic in my classes anyway. What sort of witch am I, really?" Her old self-conscious self was bubbling up again, and she did not like it. The fact that her core ambitions never included a shred of witchcraft had always been something of a disappointment to her family. As much as she lived for it… the comparisons between her and Muggle women always remained something of a nerve-touching sore spot. 

Severus seemed to gauge as much. 

"Not that I appreciate being used as some kind of agony aunt," he began softly, "but do you honestly think that your talents as a witch end where your classroom door does?"

"The universe is a _pretty_ big classroom."

"I give up…" Snape conceded, rolling his eyes spectacularly. "If all you want is sympathy, Aurora, you will not get it from me. You  _are_ a witch. A witch with the added bonus of possessing a shred of logical, left-brained intelligence. It is certainly not a common talent amongst magical folk."

They stared at each other intensely for a few moments across the desk. She had a million ripostes right on the tip of her tongue to counter any insult he may throw at her… but a compliment… from _him…_ that was a far more difficult situation to handle. As if feeling the exact same way, Severus casually began flicking through the pile of duties she had thrust at him - he stopped at a few pages, drew them out of the pile between his fingers, and lay them in front of her. 

"You could at _least_ schedule half of the the career advice meetings," he instructed. "Merlin knows if I have to sit through one more Slytherin gushing to me about becoming a world-famous wizarding rock singer I will _Muffliato_ my own ears." 

Aurora laughed unconsciously. She was met with a disapproving look, which only made her chuckle more. 

"Very well. It shall be done." She sighed and scanned through the list. In her peripherals she could see his writing begin to slow slightly… and she could tell that he was looking in her direction. When Aurora looked back up, however, his gaze had quickly snapped back down to his marking. And perhaps it was just her brain's insane subconscious desire to make him appear more human to her… but she could swear that something was playing on his mind. She wracked her brains to think of what to say - before the thought hit her. 

She opened her mouth a good three times before she asked, tentatively: 

"… How… how is Eileen, by the way?"

Snape suddenly cursed as his quill tip snapped in half upon the parchment. 

"Are you able to have visitations with her now that Albus has got you doing -?" Aurora continued gently. Too genuinely interested to stop herself. 

"I think I've had as much of you as I can handle tonight," he informed her testily, tossing the quill away beside him and sliding up from his chair and striding toward the door.

"Don't forget that those meetings need to be scheduled by the end of spring; I'd put it in your diary now if I were you," Snape informed her as he pulled upon the door. As Sinistra crossed to leave, he added silkily: "I'd have a good think on whether it's a nice Muggle job, with a nice Muggle husband, in a _nice_ Muggle suburb you really want. And if you are still here, I am sure you will not forget our planned meeting for tomorrow evening..."

" _Husband_ _…_ " Sinistra bit testily. "Don't make me sick into my own nausea."

"My point exactly," he said coolly. "Get out now."

Sinistra gave an ironic bow and side stepped out. "Goodnight, sir."  
  
" _Get out_." was the most enchanting reply before the door slammed behind her.

She leant back against the closed door and gave a sniff of amusement.

* * *

 

The torches in the hallway to the Hogwarts kitchens were barely illumined after curfew. Obviously to discourage wandering students from trying to score a midnight feast… though usually it was the Professors who ventured in looking for hot drinks and baked goods during the twilight hours.

Snape finally arrived at the end of one of two pathways – one led to the Hufflepuff basement, the other to a gigantic portrait of fruit. He reached out to the portrait and tickled one of the pears, rolling his eyes as he did so, he had always hated this stupid password of sorts. The pear began to squirm and giggle, and then transformed into a great big golden doorknob.

A number of House Elves scurried around his feet as he entered, too busy washing up from the last of the evening meals to notice his existence. Most had clearly retired for the night, but one particular seemed to have been waiting for his arrival.

"Master Snape, sir!" called the very same elf, waving her arms enthusiastically as she did so. He strode over to her and nodded solemnly. "We hasn't seens you in a while, Master Snape, sir! Was wondering if you needed this anymore…"

"I have been preoccupied," he explained simply, though in actuality he probably hadn't put it in the most simple of terms. The House Elf merely nodded vacantly.

"Sames as before then?" she queried cheerfully. He nodded in the affirmative. She scurried away for a few moments, and when she returned she held up a colossal block of chocolate, its gold-coloured foil glaring into his eyes. Snape took it and placed it into his robe pocket.

"Will there be anything else, sir?" the House Elf squeaked enthusiastically.

"No," Snape answered. "Until next time, then."

* * *

 

The next morning signaled the start of the weekend. Usually, he allowed himself another hour of sleep on Saturdays, but this hour was instead spent mentally preparing himself for what was to come. He hated this day of the month – with a passionate fire of a thousand suns. He began it like any other day… with a shower, buttoning himself up in an almost robotic fashion, a cup of black coffee, perhaps a piece of toast in his own quarters… and then he sat himself down at his desk to meditate. Normally such an act was not needed when one had utilized the power of Occlumency for as much as he had done throughout the years, but this day was always a bit more difficult.

This one began in an especially difficult manner, as he was interrupted in his mind-emptying by the most maddening knock at the door.

 _For fuck's sake!_ His hand slammed against the corner of the desk in frustration as all of his thoughts came cascading back. Merlin help the poor soul at the door…  

"A good morning to you, Severus," Dumbledore quipped cheerfully as he was greeted with the most malicious glare Snape could construct.

"It's not time yet, Albus." Snape informed him, stalking back into his chambers. The Headmaster followed him in.

"Unfortunately, I will be preoccupied with other meetings this afternoon so I'd rather get on our way" Dumbledore explained. "I hope I have not interrupted anything."

_Just the last shred of my sanity, no big deal._

"Can't you just give me a letter of permission?" Snape bit sarcastically.

The elder man chuckled. "If I could, my boy, I would… you would probably appreciate the privacy. The Minister for Magic pleaded a hard bargain with me. What's all this?" he gestured to the pile of accounts on the table.

"Monotonous duties, as per." Snape explained, pulling on his cloak and scarf.

"I thought I had told Minerva to give these duties to Professor Sinistra." Dumbledore answered curiously. 

"Aurora has been trying to discuss this very issue with you for a month, apparently. She keeps complaining to me instead now. I'd be speeding up that meeting poste haste if I were you, she appears to be getting… rather frustrated with the whole situation."

"Ah," came his only reply. This irked Snape somewhat. He had well expected him to resolve that issue right there; he was not professionally equipped to deal with staff retention matters.

"Shall we go then?" Dumbledore continued, perking up once more.

"Uh… hang on…" Snape marched back into his bedroom and ruffled through the pockets of one his other robes; he pulled out the chocolate and transferred it into the warmer garment. "Right. Let's get this over with for another month, shall we?"

Instead of their usual route around the lake and on the path to the school gates, the two Professors made a rare detour to the left, toward the Forbidden Forrest.

"Hagrid is very excited to be joining us today," the Headmaster informed him casually as the pair strode toward a smoking hut. "He was beyond grateful when you asked him."

Snape mind gave an abstract shudder. _Excited_ was certainly not the word he would choose to describe this outing. He wished nothing more than to run away and never return.

"Things are getting quite… desperate. I merely felt that his presence would be of some comfort to her."

"Quite agreed." Dumbledore replied soothingly.

The gamekeeper was out the front of his hut waiting for them as they approached. He smiled nervously as they came to a stop.

"Mornin' Professors…" Hagrid greeted nervously through trembling teeth. Dumbledore nodded a smile in return - but Snape was not impressed with this salutation.

"You promised me you wouldn't cause a _scene_ , Hagrid." Snape reminded him.

"I ain't!" Hagrid protested. "I did promise. I do promise yeh… I promise. I wanna go; more than anythin'."

The Potions Master was not at all convinced. If it took him a solid hour of mind blocking to ready himself for this, he was sure Hagrid would stumble and fall the very second he stepped foot into the place.

"I mean it, Hagrid," Snape warned dangerously. "You cannot let negative emotions show. Not in front of her."

"It ain't really negative, Professor, not really…" Hagrid explained simply.

Dumbledore motioned for them to head off. "You two go ahead – I'm invisible from here on in, merely a chaperon as customary..."

Snape and Hagrid walked on ahead of him toward the gate, when they reached the boarders of the school the two wizards took out their wands.

"Hold on, Hagrid," Dumbledore instructed the half-giant as he held out his arm. "The main holding area?" he reminded Snape who gave a nod through his curtain of hair. He had to make sure that he followed the Headmaster a split second after he had Apparated… one month he was slightly out of time and ended up rebounding onto the rocks due to the island being a non-Apparation zone. It was not a pleasant experience; he had purple and black bruises for weeks.

This time, however, they almost Apparated at exactly the same time. Hogwarts and the free world spun around them in a flurry of colour. Suddenly the colour began to evaporate – until all they were left with was darkness with just enough light to give a splash of depressing grey. Azkaban prison was nothing more than a cave… only a cave that was impossible to escape and surrounded the most terrible creatures known to wizardkind.

Snape felt the cold, damp air pierce his lungs and his heart almost immediately. He closed his eyes and tried to imagine fire, heat infiltrating every pore as best as he could. Every second here was like falling into endless oblivion.

"I am Professor Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts school of Witchcraft and Wizardry," Dumbledore proclaimed to the several towering black beings descending onto them: the Dementors. The guards of this prison that fed on every good thought, every shred of happy memory held in one's subconscious. "I have two Ministry-approved visitors for prisoner 739, cell block D. You will escort us."

He laid down the signed declaration upon a great long table in the centre of the holding room. Snape often wondered what on earth this table was ever used for; the Dementors only ever fed off the happiness of the inmates, and the inmates in turn only ever ate in their cells… if they ever ate at all.

One of the cloaked figures floated above the parchment like some giant, ominous storm cloud. It paused there for a few moments before nodding slowly and gesturing for them to follow the one closest to the only other opening in the room.

It always seemed like a hundred years to get to cell block D, though in reality it was one of the closest ones to get to. Dumbledore remained far behind as he always did. They never talked from this point on. Cornelius Fudge had always specifically stipulated that he accompany him on every visit to Azkaban (given Snape's history, it probably was the soundest decision to make), but Dumbledore often pretended that he were not here in order to give him some shred of privacy. It was rather a kindhearted gesture on his part.

This time, however, the usual system had been slightly disturbed by the presence of someone who had never come to terms with just what a horrifying and bleak place this was. It wasn't just a place to lock up those who had broken the law… put simply, it was hell incarnate. Hagrid couldn't hide his whimpers any longer. Dumbledore had to conjure a Patronus just to follow him around… it deflected what it could, but as it may as well have been the Headquarters for Dementors and the like, it could only help so much.

"Hagrid… what did I specifically instruct?" Snape whispered as he followed the Dementor around a corner and up a flight of wet, stone steps.

"S-sorry, Professor," he sniffed. "I just can't believe she… I didn't think it would be so cold…"

They came to a familiar portion of the corridor. Snape remembered this well. He remembered the specific cracks on the stone, the familiar screams and moans from some of the inmates here, the smell of rancid piss… he closed his eyes and took a deep breath before they all came to a stop.

"Leave us," Dumbledore called from the end of the corridor. "As per the declaration, I have sworn to keep order here."

The Dementor drifted for a minute and contemplated his words, after it had processed, it floated its way past them – making Hagrid burst into tears as it did so. Dumbledore's Patronus shield quivered for a few seconds.

"Stay with Dumbledore," Snape instructed as he moved forward toward one of the centre cells. Hagrid remained where he was told, his foggy eyes flicking back and forth between the younger man and the cell before him. Snape's fingers intertwined themselves around the cold steel bars.

"Ma?" he called softly. Over time he had found that using the name he called her as a child as opposed to an adult comforted her more for some reason.

There was a moment of still silence before he heard rustling at the back of the cell.

"Toby?" came a barely audible whisper from the darkness; it was filled with misery.

Snape breathed a sigh of relief upon hearing her voice. She was still alive. "No…" Snape replied with his forehead resting against a bar. "It's your son, Severus. Come into the light so I can see you."

"Sev… Severus?" she whimpered. He heard her dragging her body toward him. When he did catch sight of her he sunk to his knees. She had always been a stick figure of a woman, but now, it was like all of muscle and skin had dissolved – and she was nothing more than a pile of bones. Dressed in nothing more than a soiled rag of cloth, she came to rest on the floor beside him.

"You came back," she sobbed, reaching for his hand. "I told you never to come back…"

"Open the cell," Snape called out down the corridor to Dumbledore. The elder wizard looked left and right into the abyss of cells and corridors before him before flicking his wand behind his back. The gate swung open and he swung himself around into her cell, kneeling back down before her.

"When did I ever listen to you?" he stated matter-of-factly. Visiting Eileen generally followed the exact same script each time. The guards had warped her mind so much that she often acted like they hadn't seen each other in years. That was even if she remembered who he was. He took off his heavy cloak and draped it around her.

"Where is the other cloak I gave you, Ma?" he enquired. But from the way she gazed up at him he could tell she did not understand the question.

"Have you eaten lately?" he tried for something simpler.

"Eat? No, don't want to eat," Eileen answered with revulsion. "I'll eat when I get home."

Snape rubbed his forehead with his hand, where it remained for quite some time. They had the exact same conversations every single month, but it did not make it any less painful. Not one iota.

"This… this is your home Ma, you know you can't leave… here…" he reached into his robes and pulled out the block of chocolate that the House Elf had prepared. He snapped it into small blocks and held one up to her mouth. "… eat this."

Eileen clamped her mouth right shut and shook her head violently.

" _Please_ eat it." He pleaded with her. "It will make you feel better. It will stop the bad thoughts."  _For a few minutes..._

"No!" she cried and shoved her body violently backwards as he held the sweet-smelling substance to her mouth. He almost wanted to shove it in himself but he knew that she couldn't afford any more distress…

"Listen to me!" he commanded, holding her head in his hands to steady her. "You are stronger than you are letting on. _Take control_!" Eileen shook her head like a defiant child. 

"Stop making me live," she moaned, leaning back weakly against the wall. "Always so selfish, Toby. Let me die."

 _Shut-up, shut-up, you stupid woman_ … Snape thought, feeling a rare pain at the top of his sinuses indicating that tears were just on the verge of welling up in his eyes, like some kind of fucking weakling.

"I can't let you die, Ma." He said, finally choking like he usually did; like the complete coward he was. "I keep you telling you this. I _have_ to look after you."  

"Looking after is not the same as saving," she murmured through barely open lips. "Looking after is stopping pain, not keeping it."

His face fell into his hands. He couldn't even find the energy for a reply… Merlin knows how on earth _she_ was managing to talk after being here for over fifteen years. It was cruel to keep her alive. Every fibre of his being told him this... but cutting off visits, cutting off the food supply and letting her starve to death alone in a cold dark cell… he could never do it. He felt her emaciated arms wrap themselves around him. They sat in silence for a while, him with his head in his arms and Eileen on his shoulders.

"Everyone says I killed you, my love. They all say I did. But I would never, Toby. I would never." She mumbled over and over again into his ear. "Some say you deserved it but you didn't. Even if you did deserve, I would never kill you, I would never, never."

"You know yourself that you didn't kill him," Snape replied into his hands after a string of these rants. "That's the one thing you hold on to. You are _not_ guilty. No matter what anyone says."

 _She wouldn't even be guilty if she_ had _murdered him, that scumbag of a human being._ Wasn't enough that he had to make her life a living hell when he was breathing, but even in death he had still managed to keep her in perpetual bondage.

"I loved him…" she whispered, finally raising her head.

Snape turned to look into her eyes, an exact copy of his own. "I know you did... though I've never quite figured out _why..._ " he said despondently.

"You look so much like him," Eileen stroked his hair with her bony fingers. The mere suggestion made him want to vomit all over the floor. Unfortunately, she was right; it was all he saw whenever he looked into a mirror. Probably why he avoided it at all costs…

A small cough from behind him shook him back into reality. Snape looked up from their heaped bodies on the floor and saw Hagrid towering over him, tears rolling down his cheeks. Snape quickly jumped up onto his feet, feeling deeply embarrassed that somebody had caught him in such a vulnerable position, and flicked the hair out of his eyes.

"I have brought someone else to see you," he informed her. "Thought you might like to speak to someone else for a change."

He motioned for Hagrid to take his place. Eileen looked up from the dark corner and squinted at the light. "Toby?" she enquired feebly.

"She thinks everyone is my father," Snape informed Hagrid underneath his breath as they switched positions. "As a side note: next time you decide to just casually pop your head into a room – make sure that you let people know first. Good manners cost nothing, Hagrid." He snapped, utterly infuriated that Hagrid stumbled in on him in such a state.

"Sorry…" Hagrid sniveled, his eyes fixated on the withered woman below him. "Hello, Leenie." He called out to her. "Do yeh remember me?"

Eileen blinked through the crust covering her eyes. "Hagrid…?" she asked, and then she did something Snape hadn't seen for years – she smiled.

"I'll be down the hall..." Snape informed the giant. The pair of dark eyes met one another from across the cell, one filled with complete mental exhaustion, the other with nothing but kindness. He decided to give them some privacy and turned to join Dumbledore.

"Professor?"

Snape looked back momentarily.

"Thank yeh for bringing me back to her. I won't forget yer kindness, to both of us." Hagrid said, now well on the verge of weeping.

Severus merely nodded and stalked away. He feared if he said anything and let his emotions run free then there would be _hell_ of a lot more Hagrid wouldn't forget.

"How is she?" Dumbledore enquired gently as Snape reached him.

"You never usually speak…" he gently reminded him as he came to stand next to the elder man.

"I ask merely because Hagrid may need someone to talk to after this meeting."

"She's…" Snape started, but he began to choke up again. Fuck, what was the matter with him today? "The same, really."

They both knew that this wasn't true, but thankfully Dumbledore was tactful enough to push it no further.

"Any progress with the Mirror?" Snape asked quietly under his breath, eager to deflect the previous subject matter.

"If you can consider moving it from the Room of Requirement to a temporary location – then yes. If you don't – no."

Snape gave a bemused smirk. "No progress whatsoever then."

"I unfortunately have had others things on my mind…" Dumbledore explained, taking off his crescent moon spectacles and wiping them on his cloak. "These meetings with the Gringotts goblins regarding the break are proving to be quite pointless. They are not going to divulge any information to a wizard."

Snape gave him a quizzical look. "Is that really the best use of your time? The break in was avoided, but now the task should really be to hide the…" he caught whiff of a Dementor hovering menacingly above him, he retreated back into himself for a few seconds, trying to shake a particular horrid image of his father sculling down a bottle of amber liquid – his eyes bloodshot and full of hate as he did so."… hide the object in question" he ended as blackness returned to his mind.

"I suppose my thinking was that I could get to the bottom of this before it got any further," Dumbledore said with a sigh. "I guess I was wrong again."

"You cannot be in two places once - you are needed at the school," Snape said. "I on the other hand… just give me locations and I can go and sort it out. What kind of spy am I if I'm locked up teaching classes all day?"

Dumbledore shook his head gently. "Your main priority is to teach, for now at least."

Severus almost laughed out loud, which would have been almost frightening as he hadn't heard that particular noise in quite a while.

"Teaching imbecile teenagers how to blow up cauldrons and handing out futile detentions is my main priority? Good to know how highly you value my skills. My main role has never been teaching and you know it."

"We need everything to be as normal as possible," explained Dumbledore, his breath now visible as a smoky cloud in the coldness. "Keep an eye out, but that is all I require from you for now. Besides," he added with a knowing nod. "I am sure that you wouldn't mind remaining at the castle - keeping your eye on a certain student… and perhaps _certain staff members_ while you're at it..."

Well that was an odd, cryptic comment if there ever was one. The 'certain student' was blaringly obvious but the other half of his sentence had made no sense at all. Unless… was it possible that he was also suspicious of Quirrell's sudden mental breakdown? Or, and his stomach twisted in a most uncomfortable nature at this thought, was it possible that he knew what he and Sinistra…? No. He could not think on that in front of him. 

"What do you mean by that?" Snape demanded. But Dumbledore merely shrugged in his usual enigmatic fashion.

"I do have a rather important job for you, as you appear so keen to expand your horizons," he said patronizingly. "Come and see me on Monday after classes, and we will have a little chat."

"Very well," Snape conceded, before realising that a certain Astronomy professor had been consistently denied meetings with her superior and, oh, that would _not_ go down very well. He'd be denied sessions with her for a good while, and he needed those more than ever what with all that was going on. "I have one condition," he stipulated formally. "You see Aurora first."

Dumbledore considered it. And he answered with a baffling smile. "Most certainly. I shan't be at dinner tonight so please do inform her for me."

He was still gazing at the Potions Master with a very suspicious looking twinkle in his eye, as the darkness became all the more consuming around them. Snape began to wonder how Hagrid was getting along – having no ability with mind blocking himself, it must have been an even bigger task for him than Snape and Dumbledore could possibly imagine.

The Dementors started looming closer and closer to them, signaling that they were beginning to get rather impatient with such appetizing souls being in such close proximity to them and being unable to properly feed from them.

"Hagrid…" Snape called from down the hallway. He heard rustling and a few hushed whispered, to which he closed his ears from, and then the gigantic being appeared from around the corner of the cell.

"She wants to say bye to yeh, Professor…"

Snape sighed and threw his head back against the wall. He couldn't muster up any more energy to go back in there. He dragged himself back down the corridor into hell.

"I'll be back in a month, Ma," he informed the cloaked pile in the corner. He knelt down again and rested his head upon the bars immediately behind her. "Hagrid's given you the package of food and potions, I assume?" Hagrid nodded in affirmation.

"Please, don't…" Eileen whimpered from the hood of her son's cloak.

"Please don't what?" he queried.

"Don't leave me, don't leave me here, I can't…" she began to sob again, pulling at what was left of her hair. "I want to die instead."

He bloody knew this was going to happen with Rubeus Hagrid as a visitor! He had given her hope. Leaving was now the stuff of nightmares.

"Come on Hagrid, let's go," Snape instructed, getting back up from the floor.

"But we can't-"

"We have to go!" Snape yelled, which in turn started Eileen wailing an almighty blood-curdling wail.

"NO! NO!" she screamed, banging her head against the bars. "TAKE ME BACK HOME! I CAN'T, I CAN'T, I CAN'T!"

Snape forced himself to turn away. He pulled on the end of Hagrid's coat and proceeded to drag him out. All the while her howls echoed and bounced off the walls and the ceilings. They were at least three floors down by the time the screaming had begun to blend in with some of the other inmates.

Snape was far too infuriated to speak to both them on the journey back up to the castle. Hagrid spent his time whimpering away like a bumbling idiot, and Dumbledore merely hummed to himself – which was definitely the more maddening of the two. When the time finally came to drop Hagrid off at his home, it was Dumbledore who finally broke the ice.

"Well, I am sure that you wouldn't mind visiting again next month?"

Before Hagrid could open his mouth, Snape injected viciously: "he is not going back. _Ever_."

"Severus…"

"No!" Snape put his foot firmly down. "You completely disobeyed all of my instructions! I told you _not_ to show emotions, to remain _calm_. Now you've given her some sort of ridiculous false hope and she'll be psychotic for days!"

"I'm sorry –" was all Hagrid could manage through his sniffles.

"Grow up!" Snape spat, now on a full furious tirade. He never, _ever_ usually lost his temper with the gamekeeper, he never had found reason to. But he was so angry that he was shaking. "You and your mollycoddling! Hasn't gotten you very far in life, has it? It pays to be cruel to be kind sometimes, but I can't seem to get that through to your thick head! You are _never_ seeing her again."

He turned and stalked away from both of them, leaving both Headmaster and gamekeeper to watch him, one silent in shock and the other in contemplation.

"I didn't – I didn't mean teh anger him, Headmaster…" Hagrid contended through his tears as they both watched Snape march up the steps to the castle gates.

"He'll come around, Hagrid. You are one of his least hated people." Dumbledore said soothingly, placing a comforting hand upon the gamekeepers back."Besides, it is often not an individual who causes such anger… but the individual is much easier to target."

The now very distant cloaked figure had stalked its way up the steps to the castle, where it very dramatically slammed the colossal front doors behind it. 

* * *

 


	7. The Stone, the Note and Those Boots

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dumbledore has tasks for all (as per), Severus has some placating to do, Aurora would like Sybill to stick her cards somewhere rather unpleasant…

Monday came around all too quickly. Not that Snape had had much of a weekend. He spent the majority of his time getting ahead on lesson plans, marking, and stocking up the Potions classroom… and also trying to forget every single detail about their disastrous Saturday morning (thankfully Sinistra was good for that at least). He did this as he feared that whatever task Dumbledore was about to present him would be taking up the majority of his time from here on in.

 

And then there was Quirrell.

 

Something had definitely flipped in the man’s mind after his sabbatical last year. He was never the most confident of wizards… but he had never been reduced to a stammering, gauche, shell of a person before. Surely he could not have been the only teacher in the school to notice this… often, the Professors and other staff members of Hogwarts gossiped more than the students did…

 

Snape stood outside the Headmaster’s office, awaiting him to open the door. He pondered whether he should bring up the topic of his findings with the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor… but he had no solid evidence that _anything_ was amiss. Not to mention Dumbledore would probably get the wrong impression anyway and just assume that he was after Quirrell’s job again. The man was full of assumptions about his character – whether he liked to admit it or not.

 

_“Enter…”_ he heard the Headmaster call from inside. Snape put his hands on the large doorknob and pushed his way into Dumbledore’s office. He was sitting at his desk, smiling thoughtlessly at a copy of _The Evening Prophet_ in his hands.

 

“Monday after my class - as you requested,” Snape proclaimed from the door, giving a small, half-respectful, half-sarcastic bow.

 

Dumbledore motioned for him to enter and sit before him. He placed the paper down before him.  

 

“Sherbet Lemon?” he offered, gesturing once more to the sweets before him. Snape shook his head. He had learned his lesson from last time.

 

“I have just been speaking with Professor Sinistra,” Dumbledore informed him in a casual manner. “The Head of House duties have officially been taken off your hands… for the year, at least. I must say though, Severus, she did not appear at all pleased with your fighting her battles for her…”

 

Snape’s face contorted into one of pure exasperation. Well, if the melodramatic harlot didn’t like it then she shouldn’t have come grumbling to him about it!

 

“I could care less about her feelings,” he informed him, leaning back in his chair and folding his arms across his chest. “I managed to successfully take those extra duties off my hands, did I not?”

 

“You did…” Dumbledore nodded. He kept gazing straight into his eyes… well, not so much ‘into’ as ‘through’.  Snape frowned. Skilled at Occlumency as he was – he _was_ sitting opposite one of the greatest Legilimency practitioners of all time. And there were certain… _images…_ he’d rather him not be privy to.

 

“What are you doing?” he demanded.

 

“What?” asked the Headmaster innocently.

 

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

 

“Like what? I confess I know of no other way to look…”

 

Snape closed his eyes and rolled them behind the lids. A brilliant man, and somewhat of a father figure to him as he was, Albus Dumbledore certainly knew how to ravel feathers. Snape had the impression he rather enjoyed it, too.

 

“What did you want to discuss with me exactly?” Snape prompted, more forcefully.

 

Before Dumbledore could answer him, there was another swift knock at the door.

 

_“Enter.”_ Dumbledore commanded yet again. Snape turned in his seat to see both Professors McGonagall and Sprout.

 

“Where is everybody then?” McGonagall enquired, taking one look at Professor Snape and then another everywhere but Professor Snape – as if somebody else would jump out of nowhere. She and the Head of Hufflepuff trenched up to the desk, where Dumbledore had bizarrely pulled out several chairs with a wave of his wand.

 

“Everybody?” Snape repeated curiously. “The Headmaster and I were just in the middle of a meeting, thank you…”

 

“I do believe that includes us?” Sprout queried to Dumbledore before McGonagall could begin to bicker with her House rival. He nodded from behind his desk. “Don’t worry,” she said reassuringly to Snape as she sat on the chair opposite him. “I haven’t the foggiest idea what’s going on either!”

 

“None of us do,” said McGonagall. She looked somewhat affronted. “Albus, I wish you would be just a _wee_ bit more open with-“

 

Another knock at the door silenced her discouraging feedback. This time, Professor Flitwick, Head of Ravenclaw, and Hagrid entered. Professor Quirrell closely followed them. Snape’s senses caught alight again at the mere sight of him.

 

“Welcome all,” Dumbledore greeted cheerfully with open arms. He motioned to them to sit down in the circle that he had created around his desk… when everyone had done so (Hagrid’s chair began creaking in heated protest as it always did), he passed around goblets of water. Sprout looked into hers with a disappointed expression.

 

“Nothing stronger than iced water?” she enquired, swilling the liquid around in her right hand.

 

“Honestly, Pomona, we are not here for an office party!” McGonagall snapped back, waving away the goblet of water when it floated by her. It rested itself in Hagrid’s palm – who sipped at it, immediately making it empty. He caught Snape’s eye and almost instantly looked away at someone else. Snape felt a surprising twinge of remorse.

 

After a few moments of casual, confused mutterings between the group of teachers and other staff members, Dumbledore raised both his hands.

 

“Thank you for all for meeting with me on such short notice,” he announced pleasantly. McGonagall and Snape exchanged glances, and he was pleased to see she was just as confused (and slightly irritated) as he was.

 

“As you all know,” Dumbledore continued. “The school currently has in its possession a very rare, and very dangerous, artifact. I want to firstly thank Minerva for stepping up to my role the past few weeks, during my absence.” He nodded to the Head of Gryffindor, who gave a very short and curt nod before returning to frowning at him.

 

“Unfortunately, during my absence of school duties, I have come to the conclusion that more… rigorous protections are needed to protect this artifact than merely placing the thing underneath my pillow. There have been shreds of evidence provided to me regarding dark activity in the Wizarding world of late – I thank Severus for much of this information –“ and again he nodded, but in Professor Snape’s direction. Snape did not look at Dumbledore, however, his eyes were boring into Quirrell’s, waiting for him to show a telltale sign. “… and I think it is time to act upon this. The Philosopher’s Stone was entrusted to me. And I intend to keep it far out of the reach of unworthy hands…”

 

“Can we get to the point of this, Albus,” McGonagall pressed, drumming her fingers on the desk next to her. “I have an early start preparing my Quidditch team to obliterate the Slytherins this year.”

 

Snape gave an involuntary smirk at her tongue-in-cheek banter, but as he was still glaring at Quirrell it must’ve come across as something rather frightening – for upon catching site of the Potions Master, Quirrell swallowed and physically moved his entire body away from him, and was now facing the side of his chair.

 

“Apologies,” replied Dumbledore. “I do tend to drabble on after a big dinner. I have chosen the group of you, a select circle of trusted colleagues – my Heads of Houses, my Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher, and my trusty gamekeeper…” (Hagrid was beaming again at this comment) “… to assist me in protecting the stone.”

 

He stopped to pick up a sherbet lemon, which he popped in his mouth and began to swill around in his mouth.

 

“Protect how… exactly?” Filius Flitwick piped up from his seat, when Dumbledore did not continue his explanation after some time. Dumbledore waited a few moments before answering, the damned sweet still residing on the inside of his cheek.

 

“That, is completely up you, Filius,” he said reassuringly. Or attempting to sound reassuring, anyway. “I have enough trust in you all that I am positive you will create something formidable – and something that plays to your strengths, obviously.”

 

Snape pondered this for a minute or so – as did the other staff members, it appeared. It was he, however, who spoke first.

 

“We would need to use powerful magic that played to our strengths, Headmaster,” he said in agreement. “However, before we all go away and brainstorm – I suggest we all discuss the general direction in which we intend to go…”

 

“Indeed,” McGonagall continued, and voiced pretty much exactly what he was thinking in his head. “The magic used would obviously have to be very diverse and singular. If an intruder was to, _somehow,_ find themselves on the right path toward the stone then we had better make sure they don’t face the same challenge seven times in a row.”

 

“Subject matter would make most sense? Surely?” Filius suggested, his legs swinging excitedly over the rim of his chair. He then began motioning to each Professor in turn: “Herbology, Transfiguration, Potions, Dark Arts, Charms…” he then got to Hagrid and hesitated. “Erm…”

 

At this, Hagrid looked positively despondent.

 

“I dunno if I’m the right person for this job, Headmaster…” he said nervously, fumbling with the lapels on his moleskin coat. “I ain’t got no impressive skills like everyone else ‘ere…”

 

Before anyone could speak, it was Snape who got there with the first words of encouragement (much to everyone’s surprise).

 

“Well, that’s utter rubbish,” he said aggressively (he was Severus Snape, after all, that was as encouraging as he was going to get). “Think about how many dangerous creatures you harbor in your hut _alone –_ let alone the ones in the forest. You cannot get of this so easily, Hagrid.”

 

He noticed Dumbledore quietly smiling at him in peripheries, and then Hagrid began doing the same.

 

“Well, I – I suppose…” Hagrid replied. Throughout the rest of the meeting, he sat with a fixed, concentrated look on his face – as if deciding just which creature was right for the job.

 

For the rest of the evening, the teachers began discussing the logistics of the whole thing. It was decided by Dumbledore that since he had already planned to hide the stone at the end of a labyrinth of rooms in the dungeon (the entrance port being the trap door in a room on the third floor corridor), then the teachers would each be in charge of protecting a specific room – each leading onto the next, and, in the end, the stone itself, it’s hiding place would be left up to Dumbledore himself. Flitwick’s suggestion of sticking to their talents had also seemed the most logical of all the proposals; that way, they did not have to come up with a rushed and hurried plan on the spot. Though, being as skilled in the Dark Arts as he was in Potions, Snape dearly hoped that he would be able to quickly discover the key to Quirrell’s puzzle in preparation of certain… potential ominous events.

 

They were each given a week to come up with their final design. By the time they had finished the information-heavy meeting, it was certainly nearing midnight. Bleary-eyed, they each said their goodnights and filtered their way out of Dumbledore’s office until only he, McGonagall, Hagrid and Snape remained.

 

“How do you know the stone is safe until we can get this maze into place?” McGonagall asked, placing a hand to her face to stifle a big yawn.

 

“It is safe enough… for the week, at least,” Dumbledore reassured. “I doubt anyone would so foolhardy as to break into my quarters and rummage around underneath my bed at night.”

 

At this he gave a light chuckle. Snape was not so sure that he was being completely honest in divulging his current hiding place for the stone… not that he blamed him for lying; it wouldn’t have been the smartest thing in the world to blab about such things – even to the three of them who were left here.

 

“If you say so…” McGonagall replied – sounding very suspicious herself. “I will call a staff meeting tomorrow for the others, shall I? It is only fair that all the teachers are aware of this.”

 

“Most certainly,” Dumbledore nodded. Then, with a big smile, he asked: “would anyone like to stay for a nightcap?”

 

Snape, who felt like his eyeballs were about to fall out of his head and roll their own way into his bed, politely shook his head. The other two followed suit. As Dumbledore escorted them out of the office, Snape was the first one to push open the door; to their surprise, Quirrell was still standing there.

 

“Quirinus?” McGonagall enquired, peering out from behind Snape’s shoulder.

 

“S-sorry, all, s-s-seem to have forgotten my pocketbook,” he bumbled, pushing his way past the pair of teachers and the gamekeeper behind him. McGonagall and Hagrid, who had no reason to suspect anything of Quirrell as he did, merely shrugged it off and made to descend the stairs. He stepped aside for both of them to pass him and caught Hagrid’s eye as he did so. Hagrid opened his mouth as if to say something to him, but it appeared that fear had caught up with his vocal chords because he snapped his mouth shut again and side slid past him.

 

Snape hid behind the door as he closely watched Quirrell fumble about the room, wringing his hands. He merely paced around a few steps, as if buying for time.

 

“Quirinus?” Dumbledore repeated McGonagall’s surprised greeting when he came back into the room himself.

 

“Oh! Sorry Head-Headmaster… I just came in to… that is to say I thought I… anyway, goodnight.” He turned and without further word, left the office. Snape took a pace backward, and waited for him to wander willingly into his trap.

 

When Quirrell caught sight of the teacher just standing off to the side, he gave a great jolt and a sudden exclamation of shock. 

 

“S-s-severus! I didn’t know you were – what are you doing –“

 

“Well, seeing as we’re both here we might as well walk together?” Snape asked ominously, arms casually wrapped behind his back. Quirrell looked as though this was the last thing on earth he would want to do, but seeing as they were going the exact same direction he really didn’t have much of a choice.

 

By the time Snape got back to his quarters his mind was both utterly exhausted and spinning with theories. Quirrell, of course, had given him no useful information on the way back downstairs… but it was his lack of communication that was most suspicious to him. His action spoke louder than his words… and he certainly had been listening at the door to the Headmaster’s office when all but he, McGonagall, Hagrid and Dumbledore were left. What information was he trying to extract? Was he hoping that they would be more willing to discuss the answers to their puzzles in a less populated room?

 

That was enough for today. Snape barely managed to ready himself for bed before he collapsed into the covers. Exhausted as he was, it took him a further good hour to fall into even a light sleep: which, of course, could have been easily remedied with a calming draft if he had the physical energy. And he had absolutely none of that.

 

* * *

 

 

The planned meeting on Tuesday evening went as well as Minerva McGonagall hoped it would. At least now, all of the staff were up to date on the work that was about to begin on the third floor corridor leading all the way to one of the unused areas of the dungeons.

 

It didn’t mean that all of them were that happy about it, however.

 

Aurora Sinistra was _unquestionably_ unhappy.

 

It was now Hallowe’en, and ever since being informed of the Philosophers Stone and the staff sworn to protect it she had refused to even look at him. Snape would have been quite alright with this if she still allowed him to fuck her from time to time, but she had seemingly given up on that also. It seemed that Aurora had gotten them both into a vicious circle that he greatly resented her for… they were both getting angrier and more frustrated by the day. He had begun giving out detentions to students who even dared to _look_ at him the wrong way. The Potter boy certainly copped the brunt of it. Though, he did deserve every minute of his hatred.

 

He managed to finally find Sinistra in the staff room at lunchtime that day, curled up on her own in an armchair slaving over rug-sized maps of constellations and planetary alignments, and he was determined to put an end to her self-imposed ice age. Unfortunately, there were others present. It was notoriously difficult to nab a colleague on their own for a private chat.

 

“Hagrid said he would kindly make me some pumpkin soup today,” Charity Burbage, the Muggle Studies professor, recent graduate and former lover of the Arithmancy witch, was telling the other teachers cheerfully as Snape entered the long room and took a low armchair next to the fire. He unraveled several piles of parchment entitled _Antibody Responses to Healing Potions,_ which had been written by sixth years wanting extra credit, and began to scan through them.

 

“I would be saving that for tomorrow, or a midnight snack,” Professor Sprout quipped next to her on the leather couch. “I swear the Hallowe’en feast gets bigger and bigger by the year! Or is that just my appetite?”

 

Charity laughed sweetly. “The last Hallowe’en feast I had was only three years ago - I think I’m well acquainted Pomona.”

 

Snape looked over the top of his parchment. Sinistra was still busily scribbling away on her charts, a deep frown crossing her face.

 

“Class tonight?” he asked casually, and as quietly as possible as to not attract too much attention from the other teachers, who were a few feet away from them. Sinistra didn’t even bother to look up.

 

“No,” she said curtly, and continued writing: her dark eyes flicking up and down and left and right around the map.

 

Snape hated being the one making conversation with a fierce passion. He never had to do it much… she and, indeed, all others were usually the ones who wanted something from him first. He cracked his knuckles irritably underneath the table.

 

“What are you doing then?”

 

Sinistra looked up and shot him a look of pure annoyance.

 

“A lecture for the Academy. Do you have any other questions you would like to ask me? If you could write them down and put them in my pigeonhole rather than be a constant pain in the neck, I would be so grateful.”

 

Snape blew out a flummoxed breath of air from his mouth - his bubbling anger was always all the more potent when he was actually _trying_ to make an effort to be amicable (which happened as often as Pluto orbited the sun).

 

“If you are giving me permission to never talk to you again, I will gladly accept it with open arms!” he whispered loudly, perhaps too loudly – as a few of the teachers had looked over at his forced, yet hushed, tone of voice. He cracked his last knuckle and flicked out one of the pieces of his parchment indignantly. He was halfway writing ‘ _Origanum Dictamnus – shred to produce anti-inflammatory effect. See me.’_ on a very averagely written paper, before deciding on a different method of communication. If she wanted him to write, he would bloody well write. He ripped off a bit of parchment, quickly scribbled something upon it, and slid it across the coffee table in front of Sinistra.

 

She ignored it for a few minutes, focusing instead on crafting some complex equations upon her own parchment. He continued to scrutinize his students’ homework, but kept an eye on the table. Eventually, poor predictable Aurora reached for the tiny bit of parchment without even looking for it and gathered it up in her right hand; her eyes rested upon it for not more than two seconds before she looked at Snape, scrunched up the parchment, and threw it at his face.

 

It was only because of his expeditious reflexes that he managed to swat it away, where it bounced onto the hard wooden floorboards below. Before he could react further, the door of the room swung open again… and in entered Sinistra’s most favourite person in the world. It almost made his heart sing.

 

“My dears!” Professor Trelawney, the Divination practitioner, mortal enemies of Astronomers worldwide, proclaimed with wide open arms “I have had a vision of the feast tonight!”

 

At once, Sinistra scrunched up her work and stuffed it back into her black leather shoulder bag. While she was gathering her things, Professor McGonagall (who had until then been deep in conversation with Burbage and Sprout) replied, sarcasm dripping from her lips:

 

“Positively astounding,” she bit. “Would it by any chance have anything to do with the treacle puddings and toffee apples, Sybil?”

 

“Minerva… Minerva…” Trelawney mused in her usual vague, airy manner. “Your Third-Eye must be a tinge foggy this All Hallows afternoon… quite the opposite with me. Hallowe’en opens many portals to the spirit world; I must be close to others so that if I am called upon to channel them, I will be there at their service.”

 

Snape almost packed up his things too; he did not want to be in a room with McGonagall and Sinistra on one side, and Sybil Trelawney on the other. The latter stood against everything the former two stood for. Her discipline was pure intuition, subjective fluff. Sinistra and McGonagall, on the other hand, valued logic, reason, science above all others (Sinistra almost dealt _entirely_ with numbers and compound calculations). And the fact that someone like Trelawney was even _allowed_ to teach beside them was something of a great insult. As Potions Master, Snape did have a tendency to agree with this perspective - he had to admit…

 

Sinistra could not have rushed toward the door fast enough. As she passed, Trelawney mused loudly: “The cards _did_ mention to me that you would be taken ill over the weekend, my dear,” she mentioned dreamily to the Astronomy Mistress. “I thought it best to mention, as your cold hard numbers probably wouldn’t say a word.”

 

Sinistra could not hold her silver tongue any longer.

 

“Did they really?” she said insistently, her hand gripping onto her satchel so tightly that her knuckles looked as if they had been bleached.  “Did they also mention that you should shove them up your -“

 

“ _Aurora!_ ” McGonagall hissed warningly, though she wore an expression that appeared to be half disbelief, half envy…

 

“Aurora… _outside…_ ” Snape interrupted over McGonagall quickly. He held upon the staff room door, which had swung open for them, leaving a very astounded Trelawney and a very silent McGonagall. When they had both left, the deputy Headmistress rose from her seat, dusted herself off and moved herself further up the long staff room – eager to get a but further away from Trelawney who was now babbling on to a confused Charity about how Astronomers were always so touchy about things they couldn’t understand. She was half-way to her destination at the back when the scrunched up bit of parchment caught her eye; she bent down and picked it up, with full intention of merely placing it in its rightful place in the bin, but thought she ought to check it over first in case it was anything important.

 

There was only one word written on it, and it was certainly Severus’s handwriting. McGonagall frowned curiously behind her spectacles at the spiky black inscription.

 

_Tonight._

* * *

 

 

Snape walked forcefully toward Sinistra, forcing her against the wall. He ensured that they were encased between two stone pillars just in case anyone decided to stumble upon the scene.

 

“What in Merlin’s name is the _matter_ with you lately!” he demanded with bared teeth. “It’d be easier to just douse everyone in acid and be done with it!”

 

Sinistra folded her arms defiantly and cocked her head.

 

“Monthly women’s problems?” she suggested. “Men always like to use that as a scapegoat, don’t they?”

 

Snape’s upper lip rose in aversion. He could have done without that.

 

“You don’t have‘ _women’s_ problems’. You just have problems.” He informed her.

 

Sinistra was not going to back down without a fight. She moved her face, coloured in fury, inches towards his.

 

“You’re damn right I have problems,” she bit wrathfully under her breath. “Problems with completely incompetent staff, problems with a Headmaster who doesn’t bat an eyelid employing such incompetent staff, and who also, incidentally, deemed it appropriate to cherry-pick the usual dream team to protect the you-know-what.”

 

“You can’t possibly be suggesting that you would _want_ to have that responsibility?” Snape asked, now in barely more than the tiniest whisper. “Dumbledore knew you would refuse like the stock-standard Slytherin you are. He was just saving time.”

 

“Using me, _us_ , like pawns more like.” She said, looking away from him and out of the arched window at the end of the corridor. Then, as if remembering something entirely new, she drew breath and jabbed a long, maroon coloured fingernail at him and said: “and you’re no better, by the way! How dare you tell Dumbledore that I couldn’t handle your job! That I am so consumed with my subject matter that I need assistance with everything else! What else have you told your bosom buddy, eh?” Her fingernail was now jabbing itself right into his chest, as if she were twisting a knife.

 

“I never said that,” Snape said defiantly, raising both his hands. Where on earth did she come up with these insane stories? This new-fangled paranoia of hers was quite unbecoming.

 

“What?” she asked with a deep frown. She dropped her hand and it swung back at her side.

 

“I would never tell the Headmaster anything of the sort! Unlike your good self, I have a certain sense of professionalism when it comes to speaking of colleagues in front of him.”

 

She surveyed his face for a while. While doing so, a couple of Hufflepuff students had made their way up the corridor. When the Astronomy and Potions professors caught their eyes they took a meter long step away from each other.

 

“What do you want?” asked Snape forebodingly.

 

“I-is Professor Vector –“

 

“She is not here.” He replied swiftly. “I suggest you try her office.” And with that, the two students had scurried off, needing no further instruction.

 

“I don’t want you speaking about me behind my back to the Headmaster,” Sinistra continued after the hems of their robes had disappeared around the stone corner.

 

“All I told him was that he should have spoken to you sooner about it. I am not a gossiping, prepubescent teenager!” She was now genuinely starting to insult him. “Why on earth would I blatantly lie to the Headmaster about you not being able to handle extra work? I have always thought that you, Septima and Minerva are the most capable teachers _in_ this damned school.”

 

And immediately her once piercing eyes softened. It was obvious that she was certain he was her telling the truth.

 

“You think that?” she asked, with the slightest, tiniest of smiles.

 

Snape cleared his throat.

 

“What reason would I have to lie?” he implored her logically. Sinistra mused on that for a while, he knew pure logic was one of the most comforting things to her. “Besides,” he added, waving the sudden good favour between them away before it all got too uncomfortable and intimate, “if you have a look the bumbling hoard that makes up all of the other so called ‘professors’ – it really is not that much of a compliment.”

 

Sinistra snorted softly in amusement. But then her face suddenly changed once more.

 

“So, then…” she began slowly, arms folding just below her rising and falling breasts – covered by green velvet robes ( _chest, just say her chest, Severus, my God…)_ “… why did Dumbledore tell me that you…?”

 

It appeared to dawn on her before it even dawned on himself. The fury in her eyes, and in the now pulsing vein on her forehead, returned with tempestuous potency.

 

“He made it up,” she affirmed. “That bloody old man made it all up!”

 

“Why on earth would he do such a thing?”

 

“I don’t know! It’s Dumbledore! _Who on Merlin’s green Quidditch pitch knows why he does anything?!_ ” she spat, raising up her arms in surrender to the confusion which now surrounded them both. “But I tell you this…” she quickly added, bringing her right arm back toward her and pointing it threateningly in her colleagues face, “Albus and I are having a jolly little chat about it, whether he likes it or not.”

 

It was the first time that Snape had put his hands on her since he had clamored off her body in his quarters… this wasn’t so gratifying. He always found it _far_ more intimate, and therefore far more uncomfortable, when they touched fully clothed. He placed his hands on either side of her arms and gently shook her back down to earth.

 

“You’ll get yourself _sacked_.” He warned.

 

Sinistra untangled herself from his grip and side stepped away. She was just storming past the staff room door when she turned and gave him a sly smirk.

 

“Don’t worry,” she reassured as she kept on walking. “I can always pay you a little home visit in the summer. In the meantime I daresay I’ll be seeing you after the Hallowe’en feast.”

 

Snape watched her incredulously as her black boots clapped down the hallway, radiating their smacking sounds to and fro off the walls.

 

_Only if you wear those boots..._ He thought; his gaze fixed upon her legs until the last possible moment. Incidentally, the last possible moment came when McGonagall had swung open the door of the staffroom. She didn’t see him standing there at first - but she had seen Sinistra walking away. 

 

“Oh, Severus!” she exclaimed with a jolt when she turned slightly back to her left, her hand on her heart. “What-“

 

For some reason she stopped in her tracks. And he noticed that, for some bizarre reason, she was eyeing him in a suspicious manner.

 

“I think I have managed to placate her for the time being…” he informed the elder witch casually. But her expression did not change. “You never know with these volatile sorts, though, do you?”

 

“It appears you have a knack for it,” she stated in a manner quite unusually cold for her. “See you tonight, then.”

 

And with that, she followed in Sinistra’s footsteps, leaving the solitary cloaked figure to watch on – not daring to follow for a while in case he accidentally caught up with either of them.

~*~


	8. A Three-Headed Misadventure

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snape meets Fluffy, Quirrell meets Snape, I'm not quite sure which is the most dangerous of the two...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time no update, sorry. Transferring has totally slipped my mind - eep. I hope you're still reading o'er there.

**Love and Symbiosis**

**9**

**A Three-Headed Misadventure**

 

The Hallowe'en feast was, again, as always, awe-inspiring. Severus almost regretted the fact that he had never been a big eater… being brought up in a household where food was scarce, and used merely as a necessity, he had never quite grown accustomed to enjoying the art of fine cuisine. A ham sandwich would have suited him equally well.

 

Trelawney never ended up making it down her tower for the feast. It probably explained Sinistra's lightened mood from the other end of the staff table. She was chatting away animatedly to a smiling Hagrid, loading up her plate with the pumpkin pie that had just appeared upon the table. Snape watched the gamekeeper with a pang of still-lingering guilt. He had still not managed to speak with him about the incident after Azkaban… now he had had a week to muse on things, he had come to the conclusion that he might have been a little harsh on the man. He was, after all, the only other person who had even expressed any interest in visiting his mother. Snape had known they were at school together ever since he could remember, but the true extent of Hagrid's feelings for his mother had only really come to light in the past few years after her arrest. He had never discussed his feelings about her with him personally of course (Snape couldn't blame him – it would have been a spectacularly awkward conversation to have with anyone, let alone someone as reticent as himself), but it had become almost blaringly obvious over the years. He couldn't help but feel somewhat of a profound connection with him over this... he knew that kind of pain well.

 

With the mental note to attempt to talk to Hagrid after they all had retired from the feast, Snape was halfway through chewing a Yorkshire pudding when the doors to the great hall swung open. Quirrell sprinted down toward the high table as fast as his feet could carry him. He reached the seating places of the teachers and collapsed in front of Dumbledore.

 

"Troll. In the dungeons. Thought you ought to know."

  

He fainted.

 

The screams and shrieks that erupted a few seconds later made his eardrums ring in protest. Students were jumping from their seats and grasping hold of one another in tediously melodramatic fashion. All of the Professors had now risen from their respective seats and were all looking toward Dumbledore for instruction – with the exceptions of Snape, who was still surveying the apparent unconscious Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher very closely. A few firecrackers and shouts coming from the Headmaster's direction quickly quieted down the panicked crowd. He addressed the entire hall in his more official sounding booming voice, instructing all of the Hogwarts prefects to take the students back to their house dormitories.

 

It took a good while for the frightened crowd to be controlled enough to filter out of the hall. The Heads patrolled the perimeter of the hall, ushering tear away stragglers out toward the door and into their respective lines; Snape was relieved to see that Sinistra had joined McGonagall, Flitwick and Sprout in assisting students from their respective houses – this way he could still keep an eye on Quirrell.

 

Eventually, the great hall became silent. Dumbledore gathered them back up together and announced: "Everybody is to follow me to the dungeons. Wands out, please." The teachers did as they were told, and all made to follow the Headmaster out of a side door near the head table, and down the stairs to the cold dungeons.

 

"What about him?" Flitwick mentioned as an after-thought as the teachers all walked one by one, over the comatose professor with one swift leap.

 

"He'll come to eventually," Dumbledore replied without even looking back. It was all the confirmation Flitwick apparently needed, because he trotted off after all of his colleagues.

 

And they were both alone. Snape had managed to conceal himself behind the doorframe where he watched Quirrell - his breathing becoming more and more pronounced as his eyes flicked open. He pushed himself up from the floor and gave a great groan of discomfort, his hand rubbing the side where he had fallen upon the side of the table. Snape watched him closely from the shadows, trying to preempt his next move. He hoped to high heaven that Quirrell wouldn't go charging through the door he was hiding behind… if he so much as shoved it just that little bit more, Snape would at the very least end up with a broken nose and quite a substantial headache (it could, in fact, be quite an excellent excuse to finally have his embarrassingly aquiline nose shrunk without feeling vain about the whole thing… but he was digressing now…). Quirrell did not end up providing him with an excuse to use cosmetic magical procedures, for he did not leave through that door at all.

 

And in an instant, Snape knew, or at least wagered a pretty good guess, where he was headed. The third floor. It was the perfect ruse… students had been shut in their common rooms and the staff were all now presumably down in the dungeons fighting off a troll. Quirrell was free to roam wherever he wanted without fear of being exposed. Not to mention that the traps set by the teachers hadn't been put into place yet.

 

He waited for him for stumble out of the main doors of the great hall, still clutching his side, before he sprang into action. He had to get there just in time to catch him… too soon and Quirrell might notice him and scurry away, too late and he might have found what he was looking for. Snape slid out from behind the large oak door and sprinted toward an opposing entrance on the other side of the high table; there were many ways to get around the castle, and this way might just give him ample opportunity. He swept up a spiral staircase, skipping two to three steps at a time, passing the first floor, the second floor, and then, finally, he arrived panting at a small rectangular door about half way up the small tower. Snape made his way through carefully, and arrived in a very dimly lit and damp corridor. Sure enough, footsteps were radiating behind him.

 

Not even knowing where he was headed, exactly, Snape pressed himself against the wall and cloaked himself in darkness. He held his breath as none other than Professor Quirrell scurried past him, opening and closing random doors and staring into them for a few moments before heading to the next. He swept the first half of the corridor before turning his attention to the other side, and he was coming closer and closer to where the Potions Master was hiding. Snape felt behind him, not daring to keep his eyes off Quirrell, and eventually grabbed a hold of a locked door handle. He reached for his wand in his left pocket and quickly made a jagged sort of movement behind his back whilst incanting the _Alohamora_ spell in his mind; the door unlocked itself at once with an annoyingly loud click.

 

The loud _click_ , however, would soon prove to be quite inconsequential, as Snape soon discovered when he backed into the spare room. Behind his back came an almighty bloodcurdling growl, he whipped around, wand in hand, and came face to face with a dog.

 

A dog the size of a house.

 

With three heads.

 

Before he even had time to casually step back outside again, the beast gave a bark that would have rattled all of the windows within the castle. It lunged at him… if he hadn't leapt straight off his feet to the side of the room then he almost certainly would have been killed. Snape collapsed in a pile in one of the rooms dark corners, he quickly gathered himself up and sent a jet of green sparks flying toward the monstrous dog; it stunned it for a few seconds but it merely blinked away the fleeting distraction and lunged again. Snape dived toward the door this time and had managed to grasp a hold of the handle when he felt a pair of monstrous, razor sharp teeth sink into the muscles and sinews of his right leg.

 

He shrieked as the most agonizing electricity shot up from his leg right up to his skull. He shook his leg in the beast's mouth as hard as he could to release it, no longer able to see anything due to the blinding pain. With one feeble last resort he swished his wand weakly behind his back, thinking of curse after curse – but because he was so distracted by feeling like his leg was bathing in a pool of molten lava, the hexes were weak and unstable. Then, all of a sudden, the left head of the dog had released its jaws from him; it stumbled back howling for a few seconds… a few precious seconds that he could use to escape. He reopened the lock on the door and had just about dragged himself back through when another person appeared on the other side. Quirrell was gaping at him, like a deer in the headlights. Snape slammed the door shut with a lasting vision of the beast howling in pain, blood leaking from one of its six eyes - obviously one of his curses had managed to hit the right spot.

 

Without thinking, he latched himself onto Quirrell's robes, pinning him to the wall opposite. It was half to intimidate the man and half to steady himself, as he was no longer able to walk. He half expected to look down and see a bloodied stump where his leg once was.

 

"What are _you_ doing here, eh?" he demanded, shaking Quirrell into submission.

 

"I – I –" Quirrell mumbled in terror. "I thought perhaps the troll… w- w-why are you here, S- Severus?"

 

Snape couldn't keep this up for long, he was certainly on the verge of fainting and needed to get to his storeroom.

 

"My word! Your leg!" Quirrell exclaimed all of a sudden, gesturing to the only thing Snape could currently feel in his body. He momentarily looked down and saw a pile of blood collecting where they both stood. "Do – do you want me to escort you t-to the hospital win-?"

 

Snape jabbed a finger between Quirrell's eyes, sending him momentarily cross-eyed.

 

"If I see you a _nywhere_ near here again!" he winced. The world was getting very blurry indeed.

 

"B-but I was just scouting l-locations for my p-puzzle!"

 

If Snape didn't do anything soon then he would be out cold, and Quirrell would have the chance to step right over him and back into the room (if, of course, he knew how to get past that three-headed miscreation). Snape took out his wand and Quirrell watched on in silence as he muttered one of his own spells under his breath to stem the flow of blood. It did nothing for the pain but at least he wouldn't bleed out now. Slowly he felt the blood that had been dribbling down his and into his shoe coagulate and thicken… the rest he would have to deal with later – for now he could not take Quirrell out of his sight.

 

"Come with me," he instructed, as he grabbed him by his shoulder and led him down the corridor, limping alongside him. They were halfway down the first flight of stairs when Snape noticed something alarming… the confounded dolt was attempting to support his weight! He shoved him away aggressively and wished almost immediately that he had been more moderate: Snape tumbled down a couple of stairs when his leg collapsed underneath him.

 

" _Get your hands off me!_ " he barked at Quirrell who had reached out to catch him, he steadied himself and continued hobbling down the stairs.

 

"I-I thought I was taking you t-to the hospital wing…"

 

"We are doing nothing of the sort!" Snape snapped. "I am ensuring that you get to your quarters and stay there until morning! Until I figure out what to do with you!"

 

"S-Severus- I have done nothing wrong!" Quirrell pleaded. As much as it pained him to admit, Snape knew he was right. Technically he had no solid evidence that Quirrell had been trying to get to the stone… he might as well have slipped off from the rest of the teachers and check the third floor corridor for intruders. Still… he knew, he just knew that he was up to something. Whether he should inform Dumbledore, however, was a matter of great debate in his mind.

 

They had reached the first floor once again – where, thankfully, both his and Quirrell's quarters were located (he didn't fancy trying any more stairs this evening). But halfway toward his fellow professor's rooms, they ran into a lone teacher who had seemingly broken away from the pack.

 

"Professors!" Minerva McGonagall called out to them down the corridor sharply. She waved them toward her and demanded: "I need both of you to come with me, please. The dungeons have been cleared with no sight of the thing."

 

It was possibly the most awkward march down the passageway that Snape had ever experienced. Minerva would stop them every few feet to scan various rooms and then they would be off again… she leading the way, Quirrell trudging along nervously after her and Snape limping behind, bringing up the rear – his wand trained on Quirrell more than it was trained on any possible mountain troll that might happen to leap out at them.

 

Half of him believed that Quirrell had merely lied about the troll as a diversion. Little did he know that in a few minutes the three teachers would soon come face to face with the very thing in the girls' bathroom, where they found the creature lying unconscious upon the floor… and who else but the eleven-year-old Potter and his two new friends, staring back at the three teachers in stunned silence.

~*~

 

 


	9. Buttoned-Up Shard of Flint

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus begrudgingly accepts a little help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry for my tardiness. I will be exporting more chapters tonight, I promise. I hate it when I take too long of an hiatus from Snape/Sinistra goodness/badness/everythingness...

Severus awoke the next morning at dawn feeling like his leg was dangling by a thread. It took him several pained minutes of lying there like a Petrification victim, his face blenching in agony and eyes clamped shut, before he bit his tongue and forced his leg into action. The makeshift bandages he had applied late last night after the toll fiasco were soaked through; he whipped back his bed covers to see a nice distinct splash of blood to which he quickly vanished with a wave of his wand - which was never out of his arms reach. He would have to alter the healing potion that he had pulled out of his stores last night… it did not appear to have the correct potency against Monstrous Three-Headed Dog. The only issue was that he had a morning class and an individually catered healing potion took the better half of day to brew (with diagnostics and altering the amount and type of ingredients used), and he wasn't about to call in a substitute.

He braced himself as he began to peel back the bandages from his mangled leg, giving a short yelp of pain as he did so. There was no way in hell he was going to the hospital wing… what on earth would he say? He was of the impression that Madam Pomfrey, the school nurse, secretly knew the cause of all of her patients' ailments and injuries. With all that was going on with Quirrell and the Stone, Severus could not allow any further gossip amongst the staff.

Perhaps he could sneak in while she was preoccupied and steal some bandages…

After a problematic struggle with dressing himself (he had decided to forgo the shower this morning and attempt to struggle with that piece of his day later on tonight) and making clumsy use of a makeshift bandage, Severus limped his way to his office where a pocketed a days worth vial of analgesic potion. He took a quick swig and felt immediate relief – like his leg had been submerged in hot bath water – and then made for the staffroom for a quick breakfast.

The staffroom was unusually packed for a cold November morning. Evidently every single teacher in the school wished to discuss last night's happenings with their colleagues. As Snape hobbled in and began making himself a cup of strong coffee, he scanned the room for the person he was most anxious to see. However, Quirrell was not-so-strangely absent. He was only one of two staff members not present here this morning… the other being Rolanda Hooch; someone had to be on patrol and Snape was sure that Quirrell was not on the roster to do so today.

Even Dumbledore had turned out this morning. He sat in an old and worn high backed armchair by the room's only window, speaking with Minerva McGonagall in a hushed manner. They both nodded their greetings to the Potions Master as he walked past them, who was trying and desperately failing to cover his very noticeable limp, and sat on the end of a leather couch next to Professor Vector. He sighed audibly as the pressure left his leg, but thankfully no one paid him much attention.

"Can I have everyone's attention if you please," Dumbledore called for silence, holding up both of his hands. The chattering in the room immediately subsided.

"I just wanted a quick word to those here present today…" he continued gently, "before we all head off to our various veins of work once more." McGonagall nodded her support from the chair next to him – she obviously thought it was a splendid idea also.

"I assume the knowledge has now come to pass that the troll was indeed found last night," he said, addressing the enraptured teachers. "I would like to reassure every one of you that the matter is being dealt with as best as it can. It might have also not escaped your knowledge that three students were involved in the eventual capture of the troll… to clear any confusion, these students go by the names of Miss Hermione Granger, Mr. Ronald Weasley – and Mr. Harry Potter."

A few of the teachers exchanged knowing nods to one another; clearly, this had become common knowledge during the course of the morning as none of them looked surprised. Snape felt a small twang of fury in his belly… that Potter boy. How dare he put his life in such danger only a couple of months after arriving at the school! It seemed that Snape's dream of him walking into school a well-behaved, innocuous student who blended into the background and irked him no more than the next Gryffindor had very well been quashed. He would have to do some serious surveillance from now on… as if he needed something else to worry about what with Quirrell and his mother in Azkaban and his spying for Dumbledore and worst – being teacher to such bumbling, hormonal idiots.

"Now it is not my wish that these students be given any sort of preferential treatment due to their heroic actions," Dumbledore continued. Snape could not help but roll his eyes. Heroic. That old man and his severely misguided sentiments. "I want business as normal, please. I would also like to speak to those of you who have been given special assignments for this year this afternoon after classes, please."

Clearly he was referring to those who had been assigned to protect the Philosopher's Stone. Snape already knew what the request would be: for them to get a move on with their protections to ensure that it was especially safeguarded. Just as Dumbledore was about to rise from his seat, indicating an end to the announcements, someone piped up from the furthest seat: "Special assignments?"

Dumbledore stopped mid-stance and looked up slowly through his crescent moon glasses. A few of the teachers looked back toward the voice's source, which Snape was not all too surprised to see came from Professor Sinistra… though it was surprising to see her awake at such an early hour.

"Have a good day, all" Dumbledore smiled and continued on his merry way. He passed Snape and Vector, whose eyes followed him out. Everybody turned back to their conversations or breakfasts or last minute class preparations; everybody but Sinistra, who was now standing by the door with her arms folded. Snape watched over his coffee.

"Headmaster?" she inquired. But Dumbledore had apparently not heard her: he drifted out of the staffroom and shut the door, leaving her standing there so awkwardly it was almost painful to see.

She flicked back her hair and backed away into her corner where she continued sorting through her folders, trying to avoid anyone's eye. Snape downed the rest of his coffee and slowly pushed himself off the couch where he hobbled over to the pigeonholes on the wall. As he sorted through his messages he could hear the footsteps of many of the teachers filtering out behind him. It was clear that they only made an appearance this morning to hear what Dumbledore had to say about the Hallowe'en fiasco (and by the mutterings of a few of them, the announcement appeared to be something of a disappointment to them). By the time he had collected the messages he needed (and thrown the various requests from students regarding extensions to assignments in the bin) and had hobbled back across the room, there were only a handful of teachers left. Fuck, his leg. It would have been a sweet relief just to saw the bloody thing off. Hagrid and his beasts! Perhaps this made them quits now, and he wouldn't have to apologise to him after all.

No-one paid the grimace on his face very much attention, to which he was very thankful. But there was always someone there to put a spanner in the works. As he dragged himself over to one of the chairs to continue some marking before his morning class, he felt Sinistra's alarmed observation follow him.

" _What_?" he asked harshly.

She blinked at his lower half. It made him feel so uncomfortable that he wished he had another pair of trousers to pull up over the ones he was already wearing.

"What did you do to your leg?" she demanded from her low-slung armchair.

Snape stood up as straight as he possibly could; he pulled his cloak over his right leg so that it was completely shaded.

"Nothing. I just sat on it awkwardly, that's all."

Sinistra raised her heavy brow. "Right. Because I so often see you curled up on couches, lounging like a cat." She went back to her work, however, and did not pay him much more attention. That was, until, he took a seat opposite her next to the window. A minute went by where he paid no attention to her, and merely set to work on marking a pile of homework… but slowly, surely, alarms bells started ringing in his head. His eyes flicked to the left and he saw that she had her head positioned directly at him.

" _What_? For god's sake!" he spat.

"You're…" she pointed feebly.

Following her gesture to his lower half, Snape was mortified to see that the lower part of his trousers were glistening in the sunlight with what was obviously blood that had seeped through the fabric.

"Ah," he murmured to himself, as he covered it with his cloak yet again. He had to make a quick exit somehow. The attention this was bringing him was now close to unbearable.

"Go to the hospital wing!" Sinistra said under her breath – as if that hadn't crossed his mind, as if he were some mental delinquent. He had to admit, however, that he was glad his immediate first aid was her first thought, and that she hadn't immediately begun drilling him with questions. It wasn't often that happened.

"It's fine," he assured her, though even one not skilled in Legilimency or any of the cerebral magical arts (i.e. one Aurora Sinistra) could see that he was blatantly lying.

"You -!" Sinistra replied in complete frustration. But, then, to his supreme delight, she got up and stormed out of the room – leaving all of her belongings on the table. It took him a few minutes to snap himself back into the tasks at hand, but when he did, he figured that he had better make himself scarce… else leave a trail of his own blood on the staffroom floor.

He did not bother to wait to see if she came back. He made his way to the Potions classroom very slowly and with great physical effort, where he began setting up the cauldrons and ingredients for his NEWT students. Despite the significantly reduced number of Potions students in the final two years, the preparation involved usually took him at least half an hour longer than it did any of the standard students.

He was halfway through counting out the Lionfish spines on the side desk when the door to the freezing cold classroom banged open. Snape whirled around, a punitive reprimand on the tip of his tongue reserved for the seventh-year student who dared to forego lining up outside for his class, when his reflexes were suddenly put to the test as a cloud of white linen was flung toward him.

"What the -" he exclaimed as he snatched the soft material out of the air. He felt at once that they were bandages.

"Seeing as you are too stubborn to attend the hospital wing yourself - the hospital wing has been brought to you," Aurora explained, standing before him with hands on hips and a breath that resembled a dragon in the subzero dungeon classroom. "I've got you bandages, simple analgesic potions – and yes, I know you're more than capable of doing those yourself but I know you won't so I stole them from the hospital stores – " she added in as he opened his mouth to object. "You're just lucky that I have free mornings."

She took out several vials from her robe pocket and handed them to him.

Snape stood with a pile of bandages in one hand, vials in the other, and blinked at her. He couldn't quite find the right witty riposte to this act… and he was usually so very good at that. She had dropped all of her morning's work to raid Pomfrey's stores for him, without even knowing just what exactly what was wrong with him… and this was no easy feat as Pomfrey was well known to guard her pharmaceuticals like an Azkaban Dementor.

"Urm… thanks…" he managed to assert; rolling up the bandages that had unraveled themselves in their flight. He added once more (as he felt that the gratitude he was feeling hadn't come across so well): "thank you, Aurora."

She gave a rare smile. Severus felt a very peculiar ache in his belly.

"You're also lucky that I knew you'd stalk off to your dungeons the minute I left. If I had gone back to the staffroom, I would have left the pile of loot there and let you take the rap. Can I take a look at it?"

"What?"

"Your leg. What's the damage?"

He backed away aggressively against the blackboard as she bent down towards his trouser leg. "That is not necessary, Professor." He stated aloofly.

Sinistra looked up and cocked an eyebrow yet again.

"Don't 'Professor' me, you buttoned up shard of flint. Do you expect to stand and teach all day with a limp like that? I saw the expression on your face…" she cautioned. "Why don't you just heal it?"

"It is not that simple," Snape sighed at her simplistic outlook, still carefully avoiding her wayward hands. "It was… a problematic injury."

"You can't do a proper bandage job yourself, you know." Aurora said more gently this time. She was still sitting on the floor, which greatly unnerved him; he wished the damned woman would get up… he was not at all used to having individuals loiter… around that area.

"Unless you'd like me get the nurse, then…" she mused cheekily. 

"If it will shut you up!" Snape bit and finally relented. Truth be told though, she was very much correct. And he would rather it be someone who had… significantly more exposure to his various body parts than a complete stranger who may run from the room screaming. The thought of is put his hairs on end. He did not move, but relaxed his body enough to permit her to softly undo the buttons on the bottom of his right trouser leg with the knowledge that he would not object.

"Buttons bloody buttons everywhere," she whispered to herself as she gently began to lift up the material and snake it up his calf. He winced in so much pain as the cloth scrapped his soaked through bandages that he had to clasp onto the side of the blackboard.

"Oh my word, Severus," she gasped as she finally reached gashes and blood. "You did do a number on yourself didn't you?"

He knew what was going to come next. In fact, he was surprised that she hadn't asked him sooner. The very first thing on his mind would be 'How?' if ever he had seen her leg in such a state.

"You might want to take a few vials of the potion…" Aurora warned as the tip of her fingers closed in on the edge of the old bandage. He only managed one swig of the stuff before she began separating the dressing from the dried blood.

Snape was very much afraid that the abrupt noises now emerging from his mouth would be heard by the congregating students who should have been waiting outside his classroom by now.

"No, no!" he hissed, his head reaching the ceiling and teeth bared in agony.

"Shush! They'll hear you!" Aurora snapped; to which he had to roll his eyes.

"Yes, Aurora! Voluntary screaming is a habit I really must contro - oh! That's _enough_! I'll find a way to do it myself! A soft touch you are not."

But she was holding the bloodied dressing between her fingers. She pointed her wand at it and conjured a Vanishing spell; the horrid thing disappeared instantly.

"Pass me the fresh bandages, would you?" Aurora commanded, holding out her hand.

He watched in fascination as she worked the dressings around his leg, her tongue was perched between her teeth as she concentrated. He had never had someone devote so much attention in tending to him before… he didn't know what he should do. He decided to half watch her, to take in such a pleasant feeling that had nothing at all to do with sexual satisfaction, and half watch the door in case some wayward seventh year decided to creep in before class.

Thankfully, his wand was not needed to blast shut the door on an inquiring teenage head, as no such teenager appeared. He did, however, with a pang of frustration, hear an increasingly louder muffle of voices outside the door. The students had began to congregate outside of the classroom door. 

"There," Sinistra announced from the floor, pulling down his trouser. She held out her hand as a request to be pulled up, to which he obliged… it was the very least he could do. "Don't expect this every single time, you know…" she informed him, brushing herself off and coming face to face with him once more.

"Of course not…" Severus said quietly - quite aware of the growing number of voices outside his classroom now. "There's…" before he continued however, he was suddenly aware with a jab of horror that their entwined hands hadn't parted yet. He dropped his grip so fast that it very well could have Apparated to his side.

"There's another passageway at the back if you want to avoid the dolts outside."

Aurora gave a thin-lipped smile. "I know there is. I was one of the dolts in this classroom once." She walked toward it without a word. He was just about to turn around to get back to writing the instructions on the board with his wand when she turned back around at the passageway's door.

"I assume _that_ –" she said, gesturing to his leg once more. "- is the reason you were absent from our meeting on Hallowe'en." She said it as more of a statement than a question, signifying that she did not really care about interrogating him for further information. "If I find out that Dumbledore is behind it…" Aurora's eyes shone with distaste even from the distance between them. "You know, perhaps it is better that our Machiavellian boss completely ignores my existence: I could do without having to limp up Astronomy tower every night. Just… take care of _yourself_ first, Severus. Enjoy your dolts."

She closed the door with a gentle _click_ , leaving him with his wand in midair pointing at the blackboard.

He couldn't quite believe that someone had just come to help him, actually help him, without wanting anything in return… without requesting a piece of information or any service. She had been completely uninterested in finding out the cause of an injury so severe that even magic struggled to heal it.

Her main concern had been to make sure that his bandages had been changed, and to provide him with pain relief.

Snape shook the pleasurable thought out of his mind. He had to. He had an odd fear that a more harmonious relationship between them would ultimately do more damage than good.

He finished writing up the ingredients on the board, and then went to welcome in the students with his usual dark and sullen demeanour.

 

 

 


	10. One Green Teacup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aurora corners Dumbledore. Severus corners Hagrid. Quirrell's still crying.

Later that week, Professor Sinistra sat at the front of her classroom and watched him for a while - working clumsily on his star chart next to his red-headed friend who was rubbing his forehead profusely. That Potter boy. So many rumours and mystique surrounded him, and yet here he was, quite like any other first year currently scribbling away in her class. It was only until he looked up and caught her eye that she realised she had been staring blankly at him for quite some time, her temple resting on her finger. She snapped back into reality and quickly busied herself with marking first-year Gryffindor Miss Granger's classwork – the only piece of work that had found itself on her desk well within the timeframe.

"Five points for Gryffindor," Sinistra informed Miss Granger as she moved over to her desk and slid the star chart back in front of her, the top of the page gleaming with the wet ink of a shining 'Outstanding'. "I am very impressed, Miss Granger. I do not expect my students to know anything about magnitudes and their effects on invigoration potions until fifth year, and yet you've actually given it an impressive attempt."

"Oh, thank you, Professor." Miss Granger beamed up brightly from her desk. "I know they were only very basic measurements, and I wasn't sure if Polaris was quite right, but I'll certainly look it up after class."

Sinistra felt tingles. It had been years since she had seen a first year so enthralled with the reality of what Astronomy actually was. Most came in bright and hopeful and ready to discover new planets or comets… and they usually left rather despondent when it was finally revealed to them that Astronomy was more or less extremely complicated mathematics coupled with extremely complicated physics in order to actually bring about any kind of magic. This did not appear to faze this bright young first year in the slightest, however. In fact, she seemed to thrive on it - not quite unlike an eleven-year-old Aurora when she first attended Uagadou.

She smiled. "Not necessary, but I see you are eager. So go very much ahead," she encouraged. "If you'd like some extra study, I can always provide you with some of my research on photometric magic."

"Oh, you would Professor?" Granger exclaimed excitedly, positively bouncing in her seat. "I would take such good care of them, I swear! Thank you!"

"Not at all," her teacher waved her gratitude away. She caught sight of the redheaded boy pointing at the girl and laughing in her peripheral vision, which vaguely incensed her. "See me at the end of class and I shall take you to my office."

The Gryffindor girl beamed affectionately. Sinistra allowed her to spend the rest of class time reading various textbooks from the bookshelf at the back of the class. The rest of the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs scurried their quills across their charts trying to get everything completed before the bell rang. Sinistra swept around the room assisting various students with their questions; when the big golden clock at the front of her classroom showed close to four 'o'clock, she waved her wand and began writing homework instructions on the blackboard.

"I'd like all of you to leave your star charts on the desks for me to collect, please," she called in her usual authoritative manner. "Now for next week I'd like two star charts – one each for the observable Saturday and Sunday night skies. You shall also write me an essay on the history of ancient Greek astronomy, paying particular attention to the absorption into the magical community in the 4th century BC. Two rolls should do it, I think. Do you have a problem with that, young man?" she quickly added, piercing her eyes toward the back of the class where she had caught a significant eye roll from Miss Granger's and Mr. Potter's friend.

"Uh… no?" he mumbled in more of a question than a definitive answer.

"Good." Sinistra continued slowly as the bell sounded around her and all of the students began to reach for their bags. She turned to the rest of the class once again: "As always, you are welcome to arrange times out of class to discuss any issues with me… only try not to approach me in the morning, you might regret it. Alright - get lost. Enjoy your weekend."

Most of the students scurried out of sight, preparatory to rushing to their dorms for some Friday down time before dinner. A few remained to either ask questions about the essay or slot in the most convenient times for her precious private tutelage. As she was listening to a mousey haired Hufflepuff girl question her on her positioning of Cassiopeia, Aurora caught a heavy sigh erupting from Weasley as he trenched out of the classroom followed by Potter the other Gryffindor boys. "This is _Muggle_ stuff, I swear!" he complained loudly as they held open the door for a couple of girls behind them. "I mean no wands, no magic, what's the point eh?"

Before Sinistra could open her mouth to call him back for his blatant disrespect to her subject matter, they had vanished. She supposed she had no authority to tell him what to think, anyhow, not out of school hours. He had chosen his timing well, the little simpleton. Eventually the students filtered away and she was left with Hermione Granger – who had been patiently sitting at the front of the class, waiting to accompany her Professor to her office. Sinistra smiled and gestured her out of the very same door.

* * *

 

"That one -" Sinistra informed her fellow Slytherin colleague over dinner that night, gesturing underneath the table at Mr. Weasley. "- Doesn't think there's a point to learning Astronomy. That it's for Muggles. Thoughts?"

"Funny…" Snape mused slowly after careful deliberation over her question. "I didn't think there was a point to him breathing at all. In fact I'd take comfort in the knowledge that he doesn't see a point to it, Aurora. Weasley appears to despise anything that requires a shred of intellectual stimulus."

Aurora smirked over her goblet. The one thing Severus was good at was existing as an insult vessel through which she could live vicariously. Looking back to just before the beginning of term when they were at each other's throats to now – the amicable change between them had been quite startling. She was not sure if it was altogether a good thing… the more cordial he was, the less physical need she felt for him. If it continued like this, she'd have to go looking elsewhere, and considering she spent most of the year locked up with a cohort of wizards well past the age of seventy… that wasn't going to be good for anyone.

"Any chance of a meeting tonight?" she asked out of the corner of her mouth, deciding to bite the bullet. "Seeing as you conveniently missed Hallowe'en by getting your leg bitten off."

Snape placed his fork delicately upon his plate and wiped his hands with the scarlet napkin before answering.

"I'm busy."

"Really? With what? Found another poor and lonely sucker, did you?"

"That does not concern you."

Sinistra frowned darkly. "What has he got you doing this time?" she asked ominously, slamming down her goblet harder than she had intended. "Honestly, I've just had about enough of his schemes!"

"You have no idea what you're talking about," Snape informed her as he slid his chair out from the head table and walked away, leaving her gaping at his back for a good ten seconds. This had to be Dumbledore's doing. The whole thing reeked of Dumbledore. Her dark eyes scanned down the teacher's table where they met Minerva McGonagall's; Aurora flashed a casual smile but it was returned with a far grimmer one… and again she was left feeling like an idiot. What was going on with everyone lately? If students weren't criticizing her subject and making her life's work appear to be absolutely worthless, her friends and half-friends and superiors were now either completely ignoring her existence or glaring at her with an air of disfavour.

Yes. That had to be Dumbledore's doing. What he been reducing Severus to was far worse than anything she was dealing with at the moment – and this time she was going to _force_ him to deal with her.

* * *

And so, later that evening, Aurora found herself positioned between the wall behind her, and the hideous stone gargoyle in front of her. The corridor was so icy cold that she saw her own breath hit the door and disappear into thin air. She took a deep breath and readied herself. She was a Slytherin. She could subdue her temper. If she didn't it was highly likely that this would be the last night she would spend in this castle… perhaps that was for the best, overall…

" _Gunhilda Gorsemor_ ," she uttered to the gargoyle in front of her. Immediately it sprung to life and jumped out of the way right before her eyes. Sinistra sighed; at least Dumbledore hadn't overridden the thing in order to keep her out. She knocked tentatively.

She was just about to open the door herself after a few moments of silence when she heard: "Enter, please!"

Sinistra shoved the thing open as weightily as she could manage and peered around the room. She could count on her hands the number of times she had visited the Headmaster's office… the very first time had been close to five years ago now, when she had sat in front of both Albus and Minerva in her interview for position of Astronomy professor. He sat in the very same place as he had done that day, and she was feeling just as nervous.

"Aurora! This is a pleasant surprise!" Dumbledore quipped cheerfully from his desk, over a pile of envelopes and inkpots. "Would you like a ginger tea?" He picked up a metal teapot from beside him and offered it to her.

"Urm… yes, thank you." Sinistra confirmed. Well, she might as well be drinking something if she was going to be here for some time. Dumbledore poured the steaming hot drink and slid it across the desk so that it came to rest in front of her. He then stood up from his chair slowly and waved his wand: a stationary wooden chair from the side of the room swished through the air and thumped down in front of him.

"Please, have a seat," he offered with a sweeping gesture. Sinistra sat, and dragged the cup toward her. She hadn't felt so uncomfortable in quite some time… she couldn't even remember being in a room alone with Albus Dumbledore before. Sitting across a desk from someone who was considered the greatest wizard of the age and drinking tea was a very intimidating thing indeed.

"I was reading the latest Astronomy Quarterly yesterday," Dumbledore said casually as he poured himself some ginger tea. "I came across a very remarkable journal article written by one Prof. A. N. Sinistra regarding the theory of Io's effect on Jupiter's decametric radiation. It was a most fascinating read – I completely missed lunch."

"Thank you, Headmaster," Sinistra nodded with a forced smile. "Sorry about the lunch. There aren't many people who would be that distracted by my equations."

Dumbledore chuckled. "As much as I strive to participate in all of my teachers' out of school pursuits, I must admit that yours is a subject I find particularly stimulating."

"Even when it requires no magical ability?" Sinistra pressed cynically.

"Perhaps especially when it requires no magical ability," Dumbledore answered cryptically. He took a sip of his tea and smiled over the rim of the chipped cup. "Hard logic is not a trait usually concomitant with wizardkind. Wands can only go so far on its own... one needs the complex in order to achieve the most beautiful forms of magic," he added after a good stare down into her eyes. Aurora had to break eye contact, she felt like her brain was being sucked out of her head.

"It's nothing like your own collection," Dumbledore said to the side of her head as he watched her eyes skirt over the room at the various glistening, rusted, gold and silver astronomical implements "… but it keeps the amateur stargazer in me very happy."

"It is… quite impressive." Sinistra conceded. "Do you have the time for such things?"

"Oh yes," said Dumbledore enthusiastically. "I always have time for universe. It plants my feet firmly back onto the ground when I find that my head is trying to carry me away on a cloud of my own ego. It is the most humbling of the sciences."

"Yes," she said, turning back to face him. "Anyway, I must admit that I haven't just come up for tea-"

"Well that is most disappointing," Dumbledore interrupted sadly.

"Er… yes…" Sinistra affirmed awkwardly, placing her cup back upon its saucer. She was just about to start a very polite kind of tirade about how he had ignored her for the better half of the term, how he had hand picked his dream team of teachers to protect the stone without even considering the rest, how he had deliberately ignored her that day in the staff room – but they all suddenly appeared as very minor grievances in comparison to what now was unexpectedly pressing upon her tongue.

"We need to talk about Severus," she announced boldly.

"We do, do we?" Dumbledore queried with an odd, indiscernible expression on his face. It looked something remarkably like apprehension, but she wasn't sure if she had that quite right…

"Yes, we do." Her eyes flashed dangerously in Dumbledore's direction. "I don't know what sort of special duties you have him doing," she continued, taking his silence as a cue. "But whatever they are, they are greatly impacting on my work."

"Oh?" Dumbledore queried curiously with a slightly raised eyebrow. "Please explain to me why you think that is."

He asked this in a manner that was not unlike a question in an exam. She suddenly felt like a great big spotlight had clocked her.

"Well…" she said unsurely, "I mean… for starters the last thing I wanted was Head of House duties. I have absolutely no time for any research anymore what with classes, tuitions, budgets, career advice and timetables – and I recall stipulating to you in my interview that my ability to carry on my research was paramount in my accepting the position of Astronomy mistress…"

"Indeed," Dumbledore nodded. "And how else is Severus impacting you?"

"Um…" Sinistra started her reply before she even realised that he had completely turned her statement around to imply that she was condemning Severus himself for making her life difficult. "No, I mean, I don't blame _Severus_ for this…"

"So you blame me?"

"No! Well… no..." she felt herself wavering under his authority somewhat. It didn't help that she was sitting on the lowest chair possible, either. It made her feel like more of a schoolgirl than a grown scholarly woman.

"Aurora, I do greatly apologise that the turn around is having such an adverse effect on your wonderful research," Dumbledore began gently, his eyes glittering at her in the firelight. "But I can promise you that this is not forever. With the Philosopher's Stone and its arrival at the castle-"

"Is that the 'special assignment' you have other staff doing?" she continued at this sudden cue.

"Yes, it is."

"Then why didn't you just  _tell_ me?" Sinistra implored, now feeling utterly exasperated. "Why have you purposely ignored my existence the past few months? And why did you lie to me? _Why_ did you say that Severus didn't trust my abilities as Head of Slytherin?"

" _Did_  I lie to you?" Dumbledore repeated, though seeming quite sure of himself nevertheless. "I don't recall."

"You did!" Sinistra exclaimed a little more loudly than she had expected. "You had us at each others throats -!"

It wasn't until she had said it out loud that a shocking realisation had overcome her. What if… what if that _had_ been his intention all along? Surely not. Sinistra couldn't see a single reason in the world why he would want to split his staff in such a manner. Perhaps Severus was lying to her after all… She gaped at Dumbledore from across the table, imploring him to affirm or deny anything she was saying but he did not. He was annoyingly busying himself stirring a lump of sugar into his tea.

It was clear that she was going to get no clear answers from him – not about Severus, not about his apparent desire to make her leave the school for good, nothing. Sinistra puffed a cloud of exasperated air toward the ceiling and downed her tea.

"Never quite liked the taste of ginger; I daresay I am a bit of a sweet tooth…" he stated serenely as he took another sip and nodded a slight approval at the new founded taste. "Aurora - I am sorry that you are having a rough few weeks; I can assure you that it is not all in vain. I promise you that."

 _What does that even mean?_ She thought angrily.  _So you have given yourself permission to make my working life hell if you promise me that it's for the greater good in the end… fuck that philosophical nonsense._

In the end, all she could give him was a small forced smile. "Thanks for the tea," she nodded politely, sliding herself from the desk. Her watched her cross to the other side of the room, where she turned on her heel and queried: "where did you send Severus tonight, incidentally?"

He cocked his head curiously. "I have not sent him anywhere."

The tone of his voice was different than before. He appeared genuinely surprised.

"I see. Thank you for the tea, Headmaster," she bowed respectfully, heaving open his door. "Goodnight."

"Sleep well, Aurora." Dumbledore replied in equal esteem.

Though the moment the Astronomy professor had shut the door, his face dropped into one of grave unease.

* * *

 

Ensuring there were no persisting students around after dinner that evening proved to be a harder challenge than Snape had originally anticipated. Normally he would retire to his office for a few hours once he had finished supper – either in the Great Hall or in his own quarters on his particular bad days, and then head to bed. Tonight, however, he decided that he would make a small detour. The decision was only made when Borealis had decided to proposition him. He was considering putting an end to their once strictly physical relationship…

Try as he might, he hadn't been able to shake the pleasant feeling she had instilled in him that day in the dungeons. He did not want to feel 'pleasant' about anything to do with her, or their connection; the mere thought of it… He shivered as a cold breeze fanned the icy corridor and tugged his cloak a bit closer. With one last sweeping look to and from the corridor behind him, he set off down the stairs and across the shadowy grounds. Snape shifted uncomfortably outside of the cabin as he waited for the door to open. He was annoyed at find that his teeth had begun chattering; the cold didn't usually bother him so much, and ludicrous as it sounded he was always of the opinion that shivering – much like crying, sweating, sneezing, what have you – was a very obscure sign of weakness. He couldn't be weak at a time like this.

The rickety door finally clicked open, and there was Hagrid blinking down at him curiously.

"Professor?" Hagrid sounded slightly puzzled.

"Hagrid," said Snape, shortly. They gaped at each other like idiots for a moment before Snape realised that since he was the one who approached the gamekeeper in the first place, he should probably be the one to say something.

"May I come in?" he asked as agreeably as he could muster.

"O'… o' course?" Hagrid mumbled, holding the door open for him. Snape stalked past him, his footsteps clapping as he walked slowly toward the roaring fire – the cosy warmth of it eradicating all of the shivers immediately. "Can I take yeh cloak?" Hagrid asked politely, his arms outstretched as the Potions master turned around. He mused on that for a moment… deliberating carefully on the amount of time he wished to spend here. In the end he decided that he ought to keep the cloak close to him, just in case a hasty exit was needed.

"No, thank you," Snape said almost politely, his body silhouetted by the flames. "I shan't be stopping long."

"Oh," Hagrid followed him toward the fireplace and motioned for him to sit. Snape did as he was bid; he couldn't remember the last time he had visited Hagrid's home as an adult… the last time he could remember he had been in seventh year. He had felt outlandishly minuscule swathed in the monstrous chairs then just as he did now.

"Would yeh like something ter drink?" Hagrid asked, still standing. "I don' have any wine or nothin'… I have whiskey?"

"No, thank you," Snape answered once again, less politely. Wine he had always had no problem in drinking, but he supposed that was due to the fact that he had never seen a bottle of wine in his father's hand. Whiskey, on the other hand -

"Ah... no, I'm sorry," Hagrid was now looking down at the floor awkwardly. With a startled twinge, Snape wondered anxiously if Dumbledore had been instructing him in Legilimency.

"Anyway…" Snape started again, trying to diffuse the tense air that had swept between them. He took another deep breath and ploughed on in. "Look – I just… this is very difficult for me…"

"Do yeh want tea?"

"No!" he said, now feeling prickly once again. He just wished the damn man would let him talk and leave and go back to the sanctuary of his office. "I wanted to apologise for my actions last week. That's all."

He had exclaimed this in such a matter-of-fact fashion, that Hagrid continued to watch him from the kitchen, as if waiting for something more. A good thirty seconds had passed before he realised that he was getting nothing more out of Severus Snape. No bloody way.

"Well... thanks, Professor," Hagrid nodded, giving him a slight friendly smile. Feeble as the apology was, it seemed to have done its job in an adequate fashion. "Though yeh don' need to be apologisin', really. I shouldn' have done what I did. Just thinking of her…" his eyes grew misty and he looked away. Snape's eyes narrowed at the back of his head inquisitively.

"To be honest," Hagrid continued, head bowed. "I had this silly plan that I would come with yeh both ter Azkaban and swap places with her. But they'd see through that right away, wouldn' they? The Dementors n' that." Snape had half opened his mouth to agree that it was indeed a very silly plan before the full weight of what Hagrid had implied by making that declaration hit him. He closed his mouth shut on that thought instantly. _Did he really just say that? Did he really mean it?_

"You – you would imprison yourself even though you had done nothing wrong…?" Snape whispered, trying to stopper the bubbling sentiment in his belly before it became painfully noticeable. Hagrid was now determined not to meet his eye; Snape was certain it had nothing to do with the fact that he could use Legilimency on  the half-giant and find out the answer for himself in seconds, and more to do with the embarrassment of standing before the son of someone he had clearly been in love with and declaring it. 

"Well, I…" he started, obviously realising his error in blurting out such an emotionally charged declaration. "I mean I'd probably do it for anyone wrongly imprisoned…" He didn't even try to conceal that fact that this was clearly an untruth. There was nothing at all deceitful about this man; it was why Snape had held him such high esteem ever since his school days.

"Yeh sure yeh don' want tea?" Hagrid added, imploringly.

"I think I might," Snape answered gratefully. It'd be good to have something to do with his hands whilst feeling extremely uncomfortable with the way the conversation was going. Hagrid, now looking very relieved that he had an excuse to leave the tiny sitting area, went and busied himself in the kitchenette. Snape remained sitting, picking at the buttons on one of his sleeves and feeling rather hot under the collar. This has clearly been a bad idea. Perhaps when Hagrid was halfway through straining the tea leaves he could make a run for it behind his back and do runner across the grounds… casting a quick disapproving glance at the big mutt now curled up at his feet soon put a stopper on that thought.

"Actually, don't worry about tea…" Snape called quickly to the half-giant's back as he pushed himself up from the chair. "I should be going. I just remembered that I have potions to be stirred."

"But I've done it now, sir" Hagrid implored, turning back to him with a green mug in one hand and a strainer in the other. "White, no sugar – just how yeh like it."

"How do you-?" Snape started, before cutting himself off mid-sentence. Hagrid was probably just a very observant man; they had worked together for a good ten years, after all.

He sighed and finally conceded.

"Oh, very _well..._ " striding over to where Hagrid stood, he yanked the chipped mug out of his hands and swigged it as quickly as he could without burning his tongue.

"Have a seat, sir!" Hagrid exclaimed as happily as he could.

Snape shook his head mid-sip.

"Thank you," he said curtly, handing back the mug to the now very worried looking gamekeeper. "I have said what I came to say. There is no need for me to encroach on your time any further-" _Or mine._

"'kay…" Hagrid mumbled submissively as Snape stalked past him to the door. Just as he was about to disappear into the oblivion that was the dark grounds, he added: "... can I go back?"

"What?"

"Can I go back wit' yeh? To see her."

Severus bit the inside of his cheek.

"You do not need my permission; if you want to spend your free time surrounded by Dementors in Azkaban prison then who am I to stop you?" he said as softly as he could manage. "I would run it by the Headmaster, though. He might be able to get your name on the visitation list. I make no promises about that…" he added as Hagrid's face lit up with the blinding ferocity of a sunbeam through a partially closed curtain. "… but he might be able to manage it. God knows he owes you many favours."

"Oh, _sir_!" Hagrid cried, the tears flooding his eyes all the more prevalent in the firelight. "It would mean so much ter me to give her some company… she must be so lonely…"

"That's enough now, Hagrid," Snape announced weightily. The emotional sap cascading out of the towering man was now drilling on his nerves a little bit too deeply; when it concerned his own mother, it drilled twice as hard. He pulled open the iron doorknob and they were both greeted with a howling blast of cold air.

"Thank you for the tea. And Hagrid - " he added as he stepped out into the darkness, " –don't call me 'sir'."

And though he knew Hagrid would continue to call him 'sir' due to his incurable respect for people who perhaps did not deserve it – the gamekeeper still nodded.

"G'night si- I mean Profess - "

With Snape's emboldening glower, Hagrid finally managed to croak out a slow and awkward sounding "… Sev - Severus."

The professor left without further word. The door to the hut did not click shut again until he was well up the hill and stalking his way back to the castle - and it wasn't until then that a curious thought hit him: the mugs in Hagrid's kitchen.

From what he had seen, they had all been coloured pale pink, each in various stages of deterioration. Yet Hagrid had ensured that he was given the only green coloured mug that he owned. Severus blew out a quick amused rush of air from his nose. No one, not even kindly half-giants without a single callous bone in their body, revered him in such a fashion... Hagrid must've been  _very_  fond of his mother…

Before he even had time to attempt to empty his mind of most of what he had unintentionally discovered tonight, a distant wailing from the adjacent forest soon did the job for him. Snape stopped dead in the darkness and listened… the wailing was very close, and definitely human. Without thinking, he pulled his hood over his face to shield himself from being discovered too easily (though with it being so dark, it probably was not going to be all that substantial a concern) and walked carefully a few paces toward the dense flora that skirted around the grounds. The moon disappeared over the heads of the colossal trees that surrounded him as he moved forward into the Forbidden Forest. The crying was getting clearer and clearer now… Snape didn't dare  _Lumos_ the darkness that fell before him, else he be quickly discovered. He crept forward… forward… slightly to the left… stopped behind one tree… quickly moved onto the next… he had no problem whatsoever in remaining unheard and unseen; he was truly in his element in situations like this – hidden, veiled, safe.

Soon the sound of weeping was crystal clear. Severus knew he was now only feet from the source. Pulling his hood tighter around his face, he peered into the small basin before him. The moonlight was half-illuminating the scene before him, though he knew what he was going to see even before saw it. Yet again, Quirrell was sobbing on the floor. Obviously the man now felt too intimidated to blubber all over the castle, so he had decided that being in the wilderness surrounded by werewolves and centaurs would be the safer option than getting discovered by Snape again. This time, however, Quirrell did something other than snivelling snot all over the forest floor… this time he did something so odd that Snape had to blink it out of his eyes a few times to keep resetting the image, to make sure he didn't imagine it.

He was clutching the back of his head and feeling around for something. His new-founded turban lay sprawled out on the grass before him. Snape tried to crane his neck to see what he was clawing at but from this position it was impossible to see.

"It hurts! It hurts too much!" Quirrell was sobbing.

After a few minutes of witnessing this horrid display of unrestricted hysteria, it was clear that nothing further was going to come of this. Snape looked down and surreptitiously kicked a large twig around with the tip of his boot, wondering if he should crunch it beneath his sole and alert Quirrell to his presence so he could question him further. In the end, however, he decided that the more commonsense approach would be to report this odd behaviour to the Headmaster. He also didn't want to have to think of what to say to a weeping man… it was a sight he wasn't used to observing. A woman's cries from behind a closed bathroom door he knew how to handle like a professional thanks to his wonderfully privileged childhood - but this was completely alien.

The sole of his shoe moved to the left and abandoned the crunchable stick. Further surveillance was clearly required.

He disappeared back through the groundcover as silent as the grave and continued on his way, his mind far too full to be cured with a meagre Draft of Peace...


	11. Aurora's Plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dumbledore gives something away. Severus comes up with a possible solution. Aurora is not a fan.

"Shall we actually _play_ a game of chess, Minerva? Seeing as you seem so insistent…" Dumbledore asked the Transfiguration professor and Deputy Headmistress lightheartedly the following night in his office.

"Don't mock, Albus. It is unbecoming of you." Minerva retorted irritably. She had been sitting silently in his office for hours now, for so long that she had lost track of the time. A rather outsized chessboard lay scattered before her upon his stone floors. She sighed and tucked away her wand, which had been trained on the white rook.

"That's enough for tonight, I think. I still have next Thursday's lessons plans to attend to."

"Next Thursday? Minerva, your superlative organisation flabbergasts me!" Dumbledore smiled from behind his desk and the pile of parchments resting upon it. "Why don't you share a nightcap with me and head off for some well-deserved sleep?" he gestured toward a set of drawers in which she knew to contain a bottle of her favourite Gillywater and something stronger for his taste.

"Well…" she started, and upon realising just how thirsty she felt after practicing with such complicated transfiguring, she said: "yes. Very well."

Two glasses suddenly appeared on the small table of the little longue area toward the back of his office… it was a cosy circular area, filled with the oddest magical objects she had ever seen in her life. He poured her drink, lightly tinged with green, into the glass goblet and did the same for himself as she settled herself down into one of the low-slung couches, groaning slightly as she did so.

"I must say," Dumbledore chatted away from the stairs above her. "I am quite impressed with your progress. Filius was just informing me of how difficult he was finding it just to think of a suitably difficult trap…"

"Headmaster, you know very well that time is of the essence here," McGonagall replied, straightening out the creases in her robes. "What with the odd occurrences with the troll on Hallowe'en. You never know what might happen."

Dumbledore said nothing but made his way over the couch opposite her. He handed her the drink to which she nodded a humble thanks.

"And might I just ask…" McGonagall continued as they sipped their goblets. "That I may be allowed to drop the cold shoulder act toward my colleagues? You know that I am your confidant and that my duty is to ensure the safe running of this school according to your needs – but Sinistra is my friend – as are many of the other –"

"A cold shoulder? I mentioned no such task." Dumbledore said rather indignantly.

"You very well might have done!" McGonagall retorted with equal indignation. "'Keep a keen eye on her' you said! Keep an eye on someone who keeps herself to herself! What is there exactly to keep an eye on, Albus? What aren't you telling me? The woman thinks I'm shooting daggers at her at every meal and I can't even explain myself!"

"Minerva," Dumbledore stated calmly but definitively. "I have not asked you to alienate our dear Professor Sinistra, nor any of my staff. There are merely certain aspects of their work that would pay to be informed about."

McGonagall leant forward, her goblet hanging casually between her long fingers. "I realise that Aurora Sinistra may not be the warmest of witches. But you cannot deny she is an incredibly competent academic at the height of her game. Besides, this is what happens when you let ex-Slytherins become teachers…" She added teasingly – House pride was never really out of her mind. "… Of course she is focused on her own ambitions above all others! You cannot chastise her for that, not when her students are performing well above average."

"I do not deny that, nor have I ever." Dumbledore answered cryptically. It was clear that he was going to give her no new further information on the odd task required of her… McGonagall leant back in her chair again and gave a short noise of frustration.

"I would like even just a shred of a peek of the inner workings of that mind of yours," she tutted, taking one last final sip. The Headmaster gave a sudden chuckle.

"I'd wager you would not, once you acquired it. Even I don't understand how my own mind works sometimes: a person with your supreme rationality and wisdom would do best to avoid it completely."

She shook her head impatiently. She really did need to start practicing her Grand Chess Plan somewhere else; in all honesty, though, she rather enjoyed this daily banter between them. Being locked in a castle for the majority of the year would have been hell were it not for the company. She was halfway toward the coffee table, preparatory to setting down her glass when there was a soft knock at the door. Both Headmaster and his Deputy heads shot toward it.

"Enter!" called Dumbledore, cheerful as always.

The door creaked open and in came Severus, buttoned and cloaked up to the nines as always, as if he had been teaching all night. He clearly was not expecting Minerva to be there – for his black eyes lingered upon her for a while before turning back to Dumbledore.

"Severus! Minerva and I were just having a quiet drink," Dumbledore informed him, standing up to full height. "Would you care to join us? Perhaps you may discuss how your specific protections are coming along?"

"No, I'd rather not, Headmaster." He replied, his eyes flickering toward the Transfiguration professor once again. "I just came up to… if I could arrange a time to meet with you over the next few days, that would be appreciated."

"I was just leaving, Severus – if you wanted to talk to Albus privately…" McGonagall informed him politely as she too got up and begun walking toward him.

"No," the younger teacher assured. Clearly he had been completely expecting Dumbledore to be alone. "I need to be getting back to my own work." He cast a quick glance at the chess piece with its players lying motionless upon the board.

"Well, I certainly have some free time at lunch tomorrow – if you would like to pop up then?" Dumbledore offered politely.

"First Quidditch match tomorrow, Albus." McGonagall reminded him gently from behind his shoulder.

"Ah, yes," he nodded in acknowledgement. "Well – the evening then."

Severus opened his mouth to say something, but appeared to pause in thought for a while before he finally relented. "Well… yes. I'll come back to your office after we come back from - "

"Azkaban…" Dumbledore said, finishing his sentence for him, his eyes finally showing a glimpse of guilt. "I apologise, Severus, my mind has been on other things."

"Not at all." Snape replied, waving his apologies away. Their eyes lingered on one another for a while, and Minerva couldn't help but notice that her Slytherin colleague's eyes were alight with what looked like suspicion, though she had no idea for what reason this would be. Then again, when it came to Albus and his schemes, she didn't think she would ever harbor much of an idea. With a simple, curt nod to both of them, Snape turned on his heel and walked out of the office noiselessly.

"What are you up to?" McGonagall said questionably behind his back as he watched the Potions Master exit.

"Up to?" Dumbledore repeated, finally turning to look her in the eye. "I must confess that I am up to many things. None of which are underhanded in any way, I assure you."

 _Yes…_ McGonagall thought with a twinge of anxiety. _Well that's a subjective viewpoint if I ever heard one._

* * *

 _I will have to take it upon myself to find a better way to locate various staff members - this is ridiculous._ Severus thought bitterly to himself as he struggled up the Astronomy tower, panting profusely and feeling like a particularly overweight hippopotamus. It was always the last place he checked when he needed to find Borealis, with the hope that he wouldn't have to force himself to feel like he'd run a marathon due to her inhabiting a far more convenient location. Unfortunately the tower was also the location of her office, and therefore he often found himself heading up here anyway.

This night he was particularly keen in catching her. He had only meant to have a quick discussion with Dumbledore regarding Quirrell's odd behavior in the forest last night… but there was something in Headmaster's eyes that had unnerved him. And skilled at Occlumency as he undoubtedly was, Snape was good enough a Legilimens to pick up a signal or two; and he swore that he had seen a split second visualization of Aurora's face behind Dumbledore's eyes – and it had been tainted with apprehension and discontentment.

Finally, the striking sight of the observatory ceiling came into view. The great, gargantuan silver telescope towered above him, focused penetratingly into the final frontier. As he grew closer and closer to the circular planetarium slash classroom, he could hear the faint sounds of voices coming from overhead. So Borealis definitely was here – good. He couldn't quite figure out the owner of the other muffled voice, however. As Severus reached the classroom and wandered slowly around the numerous smaller telescopes, casually running his fingers over one of brass contraptions, he realised that the voices sounded rather heated. In fact, it sounded remarkably like a fiery argument as opposed to a minor disagreement. He decided to wait his turn in the classroom until her office door opened; he took a seat next to one of the telescopes and lazily began glimpsing through the eyepiece – fiddling with the focus so that the blurry dots turned into brilliant blue, white and pink clusters before his eyes. Christ, it had been years since he had studied anything through a telescope. It was so far removed from potions and his other work that he had never had the slightest reason to stargaze. He couldn't help but find the different skill requirement somewhat therapeutic.

The heated voices continued in the background as he casually attempted to disregard them. It was no easy feat… having spent years as Dumbledore's spy and years prior as a spy for the Dark Lord, it was extraordinarily difficult for him to voluntarily miss anything. But he did feel uncomfortable encroaching on Aurora's privacy; he knew that if it were him and he was aware that she had overheard a private quarrel without having the decency to excuse herself from the room, he wouldn't be the most forgiving man in the world.

Severus would be damned if he would be forced to venture all the way back down the stairs for nothing, however.

All of a sudden, the adjoining wooden door connecting to the classroom swung open – banging against the stone so forcefully that it made Severus lose focus of what he assumed was the Pleiades cluster.

"I would just politely ask that next time you decided to insult my entire life's work, you do it in the privacy of your own company! Not in front of an entire group of seventh-years!" came the infuriated voice of Professor Trelawney. Snape couldn't resist looking up now that he knew who it was. Trelawney Sinistra spars were always so very entertaining. From just behind the back of her bushy hair he could just catch a flash of Sinistra's expression… it looked absolutely livid.

"I did not _insult your life's work._ Whatever that is!" Aurora bit irately. "A student merely raised a question with me that I felt was better directed at a Professor versed in more artistic subjects!"

"From what he has told me, it was a perfectly legitimate question! I fail to see how you couldn't just answer it in a mature, respectful fashion! But of course… it is _you_ after all."

"The boy was fretting about the position of Venus and the impact it would have on his sleeping patterns, Sybill! Did you really expect me to keep a straight face?"

"No! No, I would not to be honest, _Aurora_!" Trelawney countered, her hair flying everywhere in fits of fury. "I wouldn't expect anyone with such a lack of intuition and spiritual awareness to truly understand the nuances of what I teach! I might as well be talking to a brick wall!"

"Oh you will be in a few seconds!"

Severus couldn't help but smirk behind his telescope.

"You… I…" Trelawney was clearly so infuriated that she was finding it hard to speak. " _Please._ Next time, tell the students that _I_ should be the one to field such intricate questions. Don't you dare tell them that the workings of the universe has absolutely no impact on anyone's ' inconsequential day-to-day activities'!"

Aurora pulled herself up to full height; one arm resting upon the arch of the door, the other toying with the handle.

"I shan't blatantly lie to my students, Sybill. It would be unprofessional of me." She simpered.

It appeared that was the end of the line for the Divination professor. She gave a great screech of indignation. "JUST BECAUSE YOU ARE UNABLE OF SEEING PAST THE END OF YOUR TELESCOPE, DOESN'T MEAN THE REST OF US AREN'T CAPABLE OF SOMETHING MORE EXTRAORDINARY!"

"Oh, shut your musty clap-trap, you old fool! Go back to gawping into your half-drunk mug of tepid Earl Grey and calling it a noble vocation! I have some proper research to undertake."

The door slammed shut in the older woman's face. She blinked and spluttered at it for a few moments, before heaving a histrionic and angry sigh and snapping around to face the rest of the classroom. It was perhaps due to her ironically bad eyesight that she did not spot Severus waiting in the wings until she stalked a good couple of feet from him.

"Anything the matter?" he enquired with his staple lip-curl.

" _She_ is the most insufferable woman I have ever met!" was Trelawney's fuming retort. Her face was as red as beetroot and her hands were shaking. "I have never met such an arrogant, haughty elitist in all my years! How anyone finds the ability to possess their own views in the same room as her is astonishing with her great big head taking up all of the space!"

Snape finally released the telescope from his grasp.

"Well, I have the utmost sympathy with you there..." He replied shortly.

Without further exchange, Trelawney stormed back down the spiral staircase muttering about ignorant colleagues and the damage they inflict upon her more sensitive students. Severus waited until the footsteps were out of earshot and then faced the closed door. Perhaps not the best time to make any requests from here… but if it wasn't this then it would be another damned thing, he was sure.

Snape strode over to her office door and rapped his knuckle across it. What she would do to him if he took it upon himself to just waltz on in did not bear thinking about. It was a few seconds before he heard any reply.

" _What?_ "

Taking that as permission – he pushed open the door. Aurora was leaning back in her chair with her boots crossed on her desk, and she was currently in the process of cramming the biggest block of chocolate he had ever seen into her already puffy mouth.

Upon glaring inquisitively at the second caller, she looked toward the ceiling and let out an exasperated noise – which was not so appealing with a mouthful of chocolate.

"Oh, for - ! It never ends..." she yelled, her tones were muffled but her mood was perfectly apparent. "What is it now, Snape?"

He surveyed her carefully before he allowed himself into the office.

"Charming to the last," he drawled.

"I do not exist to charm anyone, let alone _you_ ," Aurora bit back, taking a long swallow and turning to her glass goblet of wine instead. "I suggest you make it quick; thanks to Ms. Mist-For-Brains, I'm rather far behind on my article."

"Oh?" Snape enquired curiously, looming over her shoulder and stretching his neck to take an inquisitive glance. "Anything interesting? Your last one was very patchy in areas, but not all together atrocious."

"Don't pretend you know a thing about radiation levels on Io - you'll only embarrass yourself. No. I thought I'd tackle Quasar Spectras this month. That alright with you?"

"Perfectly," he replied, finally shaking off the moronic insecurities invoked in him when she was in a particularly bad mood and sitting down on one of the chairs by the door. "Anyway, I shan't keep you long. Contrary to what you may believe, I do not take much pleasure watching you rant and consume your weight in sweetstuffs and alcohol. I have come with an offer… of sorts…"

"No," was her quick answer, without looking up from her quill.

"You haven't even heard my proposition."

"I _know_ what your proposition is."

"Would you get your mind out of the gutter for once in your life!" he snapped angrily. A few minutes of complete silence followed this heated exchange, it was apparent that Sinistra had no more fight left in her this evening after the dealings with the teaching equivalent of her arch nemesis. He let her come to a stop on a page before he started up again, trying with all his might to instill calm in his voice.

"I went to talk to the Headmaster today," he continued softly. She began dripping her quill back into the inkpot again – it was very clear that she would still rather he not be here. "It appears that I may have found the cause of his recent behavior toward you."

It was the first time since he had arrived that she had shown any sign of genuine interest. Sinistra's head popped up from her desk, and she turned in her chair to look at him, her eyebrows raised.

"Really?" she exclaimed. "You finally managed to wheedle it out of him, did you?"

"Not in so many words, but close enough," he replied. "My Legilimency skills finally proved themselves worthy. I saw something. Your face, to be precise."

"And what does that prove? That he fancies me? I thought he didn't swing that way-"

Severus leant back in his chair in exasperation. "Is it really that difficult for you to shut your mouth and listen for once in your damned life? Just-!" he shot up a hand to stop her as she opened her mouth to give what was undoubtedly another droll retort.

When it was clear that she was not going to interrupt him any further, he continued: "Legilimency doesn't quite work in the simple way you think it does. He was not merely thinking of you when I saw that vision. It was connected to myself somehow… mixed with my own being… of course that leaves it up to the Legilimens to make the intricate connections."

"And what connections did this Legilimens make?"

He unconsciously bit down on his thumb in deep consideration.

"That he knows something about us… and obviously seeing as he cannot gauge the finer details of our purely physical… _arrangements…_ I believe he has made his own conclusions."

Aurora looked him up and down from her chair, as if considering his words very carefully. Then she finally replied: "and you think that is why he has been ignoring me and keeping us at each others throats? Why?"

Severus halted for a moment. He did have an inkling why Dumbledore was so apprehensive about his suspicion that they may be some sort of romantic link between them, even if said suspicions were greatly misinformed; the inkling, however, angered him to a point where he could not dwell on it. Surely Dumbledore would not be that selfish? To want to deny him happiness in this fashion because he felt that Severus's loyalty to him might waver? His loyalty to Lily? No, he simply could not believe that.

Aurora, of course, was oblivious to all of this. And he did not intend on giving her a first-hand history lesson on all of his life's disappointments and emotional tragedies tonight. 

"I do not know," he lied. "Perhaps he believes it would affect our work."

"Balls to what he believes!" Aurora said angrily. "If I find out that he has been deliberately ostracizing me from both my work and my colleagues because he doesn't want us dating each other - believe me, there will be hell to pay."

That was not the answer Severus had been hoping for, especially when he had been planning his next offer so carefully.

"There is nothing you can to sway his mind, Aurora! The best defense is ensuring that he remains completely unaware; else you might as well pack your bags tonight. There is no denying that you are forthrightly abysmal at the cerebral magical arts. You need to learn to shield your mind from him and his influences."

The light appeared to finally switch in her brain. She twisted even further in her seat so that her body was now fully aligned with his, her chin resting upon her right hand. Her eyes were flashing a dangerous warning.

"Occlumency?" she said, in a disgusted tone. "You really think I am going to submit myself to you in that way? You need your _own_ head looking at before you go poking around in mine."

"I am merely offering to teach - "

"You are offering something I do not want, nor have ever wanted, to learn! Least of all by _you_!" she spat, now foregoing the sitting altogether and rising to full height. He, however, remained in his chair, observing her cautiously. "I don't have anything to hide from him. He can believe what he will – I am perfectly entitled to do and say as I wish within the confinements of the code of practices laid out before me. I am breaking no rules, or laws. We are not hurting anybody. Why should I change my behaviour when no such change is warranted! Do you actually have feelings for me… is that it?"

The last question appeared unnervingly genuine; it set warning bells off all over his mind.

" _No_." He exclaimed immediately. " _No._ Let us again make that perfectly clear to begin with. Though, infuriating and stubborn as you are, I cannot say that I altogether hate you…"

"Oh, touching…" Aurora replied in a mocking tone of appreciation.

"… And I would rather it be you teaching Astronomy than whatever other bungling nitwit Dumbledore manages to find. It appears finding competent teachers are really not his forte." Snape continued. "Besides…" he said with just the slightest flavour of apprehension. "… You are very useful in other ways."

"Well, rest assured that I do not plan to go anywhere in the near future," she replied, resting against the back of her chair. "I will remain being useful to you until I am no longer useful - and I'll continue anyway just to annoy you." She finally gave a relieving smirk, which diffused the tension between them significantly. "Thank you for the offer, but I am afraid I must politely decline."

Severus could see her point, even if he did not agree with it. It had been a very difficult barrier to get over ever since they had started their sexual encounters; so high of a barrier, in fact, that he had made her an explicit promise that he would never attempt to delve into her mind, or her thoughts, or even attempt to try and read her. It was a kind of trust that he took very seriously indeed. It wasn't everyday that someone did sincerely _trust_ him with anything… he would never break that bond lightly. And she was very protective of her mind.

"I am sure there is nothing in there that I haven't experienced, or worse." He replied, almost teasingly this time – as it was clear that Aurora was never going to allow him any closer.

She sniffed in amusement, and her eyes became glazed as if deep in recollection.

"It isn't the severity of the memories," she said simply. "It is more the content that I would rather be kept private."

So no Occlumency for Aurora. That seemed a fairly ironclad ruling. Snape could do nothing but sigh.

"Then there is nothing more to discuss," he put simply.

"I guess not." She replied with equal coldness.

She was avoiding his eyes this time, looking everywhere but at his face. So now not only had he failed in keeping Dumbledore out of their business – Aurora was beginning to think that he was becoming untrustworthy. The one thing he had strived against for years.

He had obviously been trying to catch her gaze for far too long, because she had picked up her quill and turned back to her studies.

"You can show yourself out." She said nonchalantly into her papers.

And so he swept out from her office without any unnecessary pleasantries.

* * *

The door clicked shut in a far quieter fashion than it had done when Aurora had slammed it shut in Trelawney's face. The quill in her hand was trembling so much that she had almost completely cut through the parchment, and her heart was racing.

 _Albus Dumbledore._ The man who held the entire workings of the universe in his palm. Who manipulated the environment around according to his will.

She cursed hotly under her breath and slammed the quill back into its pot. How on earth could she be expected to concentrate on her work for the rest of the night? If it wasn't Sybill yelling obscenities at her, it was Severus trying to coerce her into having all of her deepest thoughts and memories toyed with despite his promise that he would never attempt to break into her mind, or it was Dumbledore pulling at their puppet-strings, denying all around him a shred of happiness. Well, no more. She was going to put a sharp stop to all of his schemes.

She reached for the last of the chocolate bar, her weekly indulgence so graciously given to her by the house elves had slightly melted under her lamp and stuck to her fingers as she picked it up and scoffed it down angrily – this was followed very closely by sculling her goblet of wine. So Dumbledore thought that she served as too much of a distraction to his Potions Master, did he? Was he afraid of Severus getting too close to anyone? Or was it just her in particular? Would his great plans be undone?

Well, Aurora thought with a resolve so strong it could match even his, if he feared her 'influences' so much then it would only be fear to unleash it in en masse. All that was needed was for her to possess a little control over her _own_ emotions… to allow him to see only that which she wanted him to see.

_That should be easy enough, shouldn't it? Perhaps with the right… inspiration…_

Thoughts and plans buzzing throughout her head, Sinistra casually blew out the light of her office and began making her own way to her bed.


	12. Snape's Moronic Strategy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus Snape's most moronic strategy to date...

It was the first Quidditch game of the season. And Dumbledore had seen it fit to place him on yard duty. Why on earth any teacher should be wasting their time patrolling the outskirts of the pitch while every single student known to man was _inside_ the damned thing was a complete baffling mystery to Severus.

He sneered as he paced up and down a small area of the grounds listlessly, while the roar of the crowd thundered ahead of him.

Fuck today. Fuck everything about today. Because of this ill-timed and bothersome Quidditch match he had been forced to postpone his monthly visit to Azkaban to see his mother back by a few hours. Postponing a visit to Azkaban was not the most ideal of situations. He usually went in the morning to get the damned experience over and done with… now that it had been moved to the afternoon he could do nothing but dwell on it for every single second until he was standing once more next to the bars on her cell. And either Dumbledore had completely forgotten once more about the visitation today, or he was reveling in the extreme emotional discontent that Severus was currently experiencing as he paced around the grounds with no silly little game to serve as a frivolous distraction.

The crowd roared faintly in the distance… one of the team (Slytherin, obviously) had apparently scored. He tutted frustratingly and pulled his scarf tighter around his neck. _To hell with this._

He stomped off toward the stadium.

To no surprise, seats in the Slytherin stand were few and far between. He remained standing alone in the shadows of the chattering crowd. After a few minutes he found himself a seat in the very corner after its previous occupant had rushed away, muttering something about a lost wand. With a feeling of great triumph, Severus also saw Quirrell sitting a couple of seats down – he had been meaning to keep a much closer eye on him today… a game of Quidditch was as good a chance as any. He took the seat, his eyes darting repeatedly between the players and the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. He appeared on edge. He was wringing his hands together nervously and his eyes were fixed on a particular spot on the field.

The game continued above their heads. Snape gave a lazy glance toward the scoreboard: Gryffindor were up by fifty points. He had always found this part of the inter-house Quidditch competition rather dull and tedious - Quidditch, nor any other sporting contests, had never quite appealed to him the way it seemed to appeal to the general populace. The only thing he was really interested in was the silver trophy at the conclusion of the whole tedious ordeal - and the look on Minerva McGonagall's face as he walked away with it to his office for the seventh year running.

A foul had just been given by Madam Hooch to the Slytherin captain, Marcus Flint. He could make out a few Slytherins in the crowd cupping their hands over their mouths and booing loudly; the Gryffindors were, of course, applauding like the obnoxious show-offs they were. Severus took his eyes off the pitch – letting them get on with whatever they needed to do. His eyes scanned from his own stand to that of the adjoining one, and his belly gave a surprising jolt as his eyes caught the discerning gaze of Professor Sinistra… she was adorned in emerald green robes and had one of the winter Slytherin scarves wrapped proudly around her slender neck. He wondered wildly just how long she had been staring, before further realising that he himself had been gaping at her like a moron possessed for far longer than he had intended. By that time, however, she had already looked away. This angered him far more than it should have done; he made a mental note to pick a fight with her later so he could get the last word in…

These thoughts were suddenly interrupted indefinitely by the sudden gasp of the crowd around him. He whipped his head around to the pitch and could barely make out what looked like Potter – bucking and swishing around in the air on his broomstick.

 _"_ What's _he_ doing?"

"Merlin's beard!"

The various confused mumblings from the crowd started to spring up here, there and everywhere. Severus knew, from the second he saw, that someone was obviously trying to curse him off his broom. With no time to think any further, or to decipher the perpetrator, he fixed his eyes unblinkingly upon Potter and began muttering one of a number of generic counter-curses; the curse and counter-curse battled with one another viciously… the curse was so potent, so unrelentingly resilient that Snape could not fight it with mere incantations alone; he had to focus his entire being into his countering, his mind became completely fixated on that broomstick as it bucked and rocked and whipped around in midair – the Potter boy dangling dangerously from its handle. The minute his thoughts and his words began to steady the helpless Gryffindor, the thoughts from the curser pulled it back into disarray once again. If he was able to afford a shred of spare thought he probably would have wondered wildly why on earth nobody else but him was doing anything…

And then just as quickly as it begun, the curse seemed to lift completely. Severus felt the barrier upon which he was pushing give way, and Potter's broom shoved violently forward under the strength of his lone counter-curse. He ceased all incantations immediately and the broom remained steady in its position once more, allowing Potter to begin clambering back on. This, of course, did not signal the end of his work… not that he would have to work as hard as he thought – for when he looked for his number one suspect, he found him face down on the ground in the row of seats in front of him. It seemed that in the confusion and panic of the recent incident, Professor Quirrell had somehow tripped and fallen over himself. Obviously this is what had broken his curse, as eye contact was imperative. It _had_ to be him.

Just as he was about to clamber over the bumbling imbeciles that were the crowd members in his box, one of the Slytherin students sitting next to him gave a quick squeal and pointed hastily downward at the hem of his robes. Snape followed the girl's alarmed expression and gave an involuntary yelp himself… his cloak had somehow managed to catch alight and he was currently quite on fire.

Instinctively, he began to stamp out the flames with the sole of his boot – before cursing inwardly at himself for such a Muggle response and reaching for his wand. Before he could simply swish his wand and charm the fire away, the flames had disappeared just as quickly and briefly as they had appeared. Snape kicked his now tattered and singed cloak to one side and looked back for Quirrell – but the blasted man had scampered away out of sight. He cursed silently behind his bared teeth. First a looming visit to Azkaban prison, then a desperate attempt to save the life of the ungrateful brat child of the man who had made his school life a living hell, and then on top of that all someone had just attempted to set him alight. In all fairness, it was a rather average sort of day…

Thinking he'd best stay around at least until the match was over so as to ensure no further 'incidents' arose, most of the population of the castle had already vacated the stands by the time Severus decided to leave himself. He wondered to himself vaguely as he stomped back down the stairs of the Slytherin stand whether he should speak to Dumbledore about the cursed broomstick now, or whether he should wait until the Azkaban visit was done and over with. He rubbed at his temples roughly; his head was spinning in such a way that it was impossible to tell whether it was an oncoming migraine or that his mind was overloading with information.

He decided that he best speak to Dumbledore before they left. At least that way there would be two people carrying the burden of knowing too much.

"You ok?"

Ah, yes, there she was – standing at the bottom of the staircase and rubbing her arms furiously in the frosty air. It seemed that lately Aurora had a habit of popping up all over the place, ready to take a swipe at him.

"Exceptional." He bit as he reached her. "Is there something I can assist you with, Professor?"

Aurora's lips thinned in a theatrical impression of deep thought. "I suppose you can assist me in walking back up to the castle if you'd like."

"That sounds more like a threat."

She smirked at his riposte.

"Well, someone _is_ quite judicious today. Shall we?"

Severus didn't answer her. They walked together in silence around the edge of the Quidditch pitch – now quite deserted and eerily quiet due to the juxtaposition from the roaring crowds and mindless chanting. After a while he even began to forget her presence next to him; his mind felt like it was being pulled in several directions at once, but at least Sinistra seemed intent on not adding any stress on top of the pile today.

"Do you have any theories about what happened to Potter's broom?" she piped up suddenly as they now halfway past the Gryffindor adorned stands. He turned at last to look at her as they walked – her face was completely covered by the hood of her cloak, a little bit of a pointed nose was all he could make out.

"Several," Snape murmured. "But I think I'd best save my theories for the Headmaster."

"Yes, I was rather surprised to see you here, to be honest" she replied, her foggy breath evaporating into the air as she spoke. "I have the feeling that _somebody_ shirked his patrol duties to come and see his little protégés playing their little hearts out…"

Unpleasantness was now etched into every line of Snape's face. Of course it wouldn't have taken long for her to become so insufferable again… it was _her_ after all.

"As Head of Slytherin, I had more right than any other teacher to be there today! Obviously Dumbledore…" he trailed off mid-sentence. He didn't wish to bring up his theories about Dumbledore wishing to separate them again. It would only infuriate her, and considering how difficult Sinistra was when she _wasn't_ angry it didn't seem like the wisest thing to do at present - especially when he did not have the energy to match her.

In his peripherals he caught her face angled directly toward him now. He turned to see a peculiar look of triumph on it… but before he could decipher this sudden turn of events, she had taken another direction.

"I believe you'll find," Aurora hummed as the scarlet and gold colours of Gryffindor transformed into the black and yellow of Hufflepuff… "That as _acting_ Head of Slytherin for the year, it would be _me_ that deserves that right more than you – you mere lowly teacher. Also, if we win then I shall be demanding the trophy lives the rest of the year in my office."

"You will do no such thing!" Severus snapped, coming to a halt underneath the cover of one of the gargantuan Hufflepuff banners.

"Careful now; I may have to discipline you for that."

Heat was bubbling up in his veins now. "You are so _utterly_ unbearable sometimes. I swear to - "

Suddenly, he felt his cloak being seized from behind. He whirled his head around and came face-to-face with hers.

"I don't think you would be at all satisfied with someone 'bearable', do you?" Sinistra whispered deadly. Severus had one wild passing supposition that she was about to slap him hard in the face before her lips found his.

Her cold, frosty lips brushed back and forth against his. At first he hadn't a clue what was happening and it took a lot of brainwork to even fathom that he was actually being kissed. As quickly as it had come, however, the feeling instantaneously left… they had parted almost instantly.

There was a few seconds of supreme, gut-wrenching awkwardness. He could do nothing but stare at her in bewilderment. _What on earth had she just done?_ No body had ever kissed him before (at thirty-one it was a fact that continued to grow more and more depressing by the day)… did they always feel that indecisively uncomfortable?

Aurora continued to gaze into his eyes intently; her breathing was rather hurried but otherwise her expression was impressively unfathomable… it was clear that she was waiting for a reaction.

"I thought…" Snape cleared his throat and tried again, "I thought I made it perfectly clear that I wasn't interested in…" his protest was cut off as, for a couple of seconds, his damned voice had caught in his throat and he had apparently lost the capability to articulate. He started to inwardly panic as his weaknesses began to grow more apparent in the continuing silence, broken only by sounds of breathlessness. _Why_ did it have to be impossible to Apparate within the school? Whose utterly vapid rule was that?

And maybe the stress had finally gotten on top of him, or maybe his brain had precipitously snapped and decided to pack its bags and search for greener pastures… but in what he considered to be his most moronic strategy for terminating awkward silences to date – Snape stepped forward and swiftly brought their lips together again.

He had not a clue in the world what he was doing. His eyes remained open and darted from place to place, ensuring that they were not being watched by anyone. Was it not embarrassing enough that _she_ had instigated it in the first place? And at least Aurora, he assumed, knew a little about what she was doing… he on the hand was merely standing there like an imbecile with his lips pressed against hers in order to shut them both up. It was obvious that she was not expecting him to do such an outrageous thing, either, for she had stumbled back a pace and he could feel a sharp intake of breath through her nose. Her eyes closed softly and she took a step back toward him.

If anything, he was grateful for the assistance. The way she cupped the side of his face in her hand as her lips moved across his, the way her other hand rested delicately upon his shoulder… if he had felt more comfortable (which he certainly did not) he probably would have done the same, but at least he now felt safe enough to close his eyes. Her mouth parted slightly and she begun to explore his lips more attentively… a few more seconds passed… yes, she was certainly more experienced at this…

Their refusal to part was not altogether due to the brief moment of physical pleasure it brought. It was rather to avoid the embarrassment of standing in front of someone after performing such an act and being at a complete loss for words. The mere thought of it was unbearable.

After what seemed like an excruciating amount of time had lapsed simply standing there like an imbecile and allowing her to do whatever she pleased with his mouth, Severus decided he would have to pull himself together and be the first one to draw back. He parted from her much more aggressively than before – so much so that Aurora stumbled backward and he had to reach out and seize her.

"I thought… I thought I made it…" he rasped, coming to the conclusion that he was currently not in the best physical condition for talking. At least his knees had decided to support him again.

"I'm sorry," came her eventual answer, she snatched herself back from his lingering grasp on her shoulders. He held a deep contempt towards her newly found expression – it was one of pure disbelief. Had his technique been that abysmal? It wasn't his fault that there were no manuals on the subject.

"I bet a galleon on Slytherin against Pomona," she then stated almost too casually, beginning to back away from him. "I'd better run back to my office or she'll probably find me."

He could offer no other response but a curt nod, refusing to look away from her face – for that would be cowardice. Aurora found a weak smile, then collected herself together and ducked away; he remained watching her from underneath the Hufflepuff banner, vigilantly waiting until there was a safe amount of distance between them before making his own way back.

There was something off about today, he was sure of it. It took him a while to remember that he had been on his way to talk to Dumbledore about the cursed broomstick… now it almost paled in comparison after…

Snape cracked his knuckles angrily. _The nerve of that woman._ There was absolutely no way in hell they could continue seeing each other now. Any form of _that_ had been strictly vetoed when they had first discussed their arrangement. They had explicitly sworn to one another that superfluous displays of physical affection were unrequired in getting the job done. She must have known that the execution of something so uncomfortably intimate would break the contract indefinitely. _Why did she have to go and kiss me, for God's sake? Wholly impulsive and irresponsible…_

Though perhaps… perhaps it wasn't as impulsive as she had made it out to be. Perhaps it was just an easy, almost gutless way of letting him go without even having to utter a single word. His stomach lurched at the thought of feeling so disposable. But then again, disposable was all he had ever been to her - and she to him (even though it was painfully clear that Aurora with her enviable self-confidence would be able to attract other partners effortlessly… whereas his chances lingered more around the zero percent mark). If that was the case, why did he feel so wounded?

Severus stamped back up to the castle, jerking his green scarf tight around his throat and unconsciously scrubbing his mouth on the tasseled end of the scarf – trying desperately to wipe away the sensation of his weakness.


	13. An Imprudent Distraction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus gives his blessings and congratulations.

****Trying to catch Severus Snape on his own proved to be as difficult at catching as a particularly evasive Diricawl. And, very much like a Diricawl, he seemed to possess the uncanny ability to turn himself invisible at will. One minute Aurora would be gaining on him and the next second he was no-where to be seen.

She did not like feeling like a stalker. Much less _Snape's_ stalker. But considering the extent to which he was ignoring her existence - it was more than a clear indicator that she needed to set the record straight.

On the other side of the galleon, her meetings with Septima Vector had increased tenfold since that day. They had taken to spending nearly every evening together now, either working on research, or eating, or drinking, or all of these things. Aurora wasn't at all sure that Charity was completely happy with this arrangement… she had been distant and cold with her for weeks now.

It was well into mid-December by the time that Aurora decided to bite the bullet and physically corner Severus so that he could not disappear into the crowd every time he laid eyes upon her.

She hoped that he would at least appreciate the phenomenal effort she had put in in getting up so very early in the bitter cold of winter when she had just come off from a midnight practical Astronomy lesson. He had a morning Potions class this morning with third-year Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs (she made sure of this by checking the timetables the previous day), and he certainly would not be able to make a mad dash away with the eyes of twenty thirteen year old witches and wizards on him.

Aurora had almost missed the opportunity altogether when her alarm clock radiated off the walls and around her eardrums at six that Tuesday morning. She blinked widely around from the pillowy sanctuary of her soft bed and drew out her wand from her bedside table, where she wordlessly Lumos'd into the air and squinted angrily at the time.

_Seven o' clock?_

She never got up at seven o' clock! Why would an astronomer be seen alive at fucking seven o' clock? That time of morning was for fools.

_Ah..._

And then she remembered.

Sighing heavily, she threw back the covers and immediately regretted all decisions about trying to force her presence on Snape. The frosty cold morning air hit her body like someone had dropped a pool of of ice cold water from the canopy of her four poster bed. She hastily tugged off her nightgown and made a mad rush for the the heavenly call of her blissful hot shower.

* * *

She had certainly needed those two hours to get herself dressed, showered, breakfasted and ready. She stumbled, bleary eyed down toward the least appealing place on earth on such a dark, icy cold morning… the dungeons. Aurora tugged her heavy coat close to her shivering body as she ventured further and further down the staircase into an even colder and darker world than the one upstairs.

Her breath rose in a mist and hit the classroom door when she arrived before it. With a deep breath, and without much of a clue about how she was going to go about this, she rapped upon the heavy door and entered without waiting for an invitation.

A good few Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw heads looked curiously around at her as she edged herself from the door and stood aloofly at the back of the class. Professor Sinistra, however, kept her eyes squarely focused on the cloaked figure standing at the front of his class. He was currently midway through explaining something about Shrivelfigs.

"- are found in Abyssinia." Snape was explaining lazily. "The plant itself needs to be skinned properly so that the magical properties of the fruit…"

He finally caught the eye of the unwelcome stranger standing at the back of his class and paused. Sinistra casually nodded a greeting which was certainly not returned.

"… the magical properties of the fruit are correctly extracted." He repeated. "You have several Shrivelfigs on which to practice. Be warned - you will not be given any extras in the making of your potions, so I expect that great care will be taken to skin them in the correct fashion. You have ten minutes. Begin."

Hurried scuttling and scraping followed this command as the students got to work on their Shrivelfigs hastily. Snape watched them all carefully for a moment before turning his attention to the Astronomy teacher. He sighed slightly and make the tiniest of head jerks to indicate for her to come to the front. A few students gazes followed her as she did so, but no more than usual whenever another teacher encroached on a colleagues lesson. She strutted confidently up to his desk.

"Good morning, Professor Snape," she said pleasantly.

"How may I help you, Professor Sinistra?" he demanded. 

She smiled openly, but bent down toward him ever so slightly and muttered underneath her breath:

"I'm not letting you get away with this childish behaviour anymore."

Snape looked wildly around from the left side of her body to the right, as if scouting for eavesdropping students. When it appeared that there were none to be found, he snapped his gaze back at her. It was filled with anger.

"And you think that interrupting my class is the best way to go about it?" he muttered dangerously under his breath, his lips barely moving.

"I am afraid you have left me with no further option, Professor Snape..." Sinistra replied cooly.

"I will talk to you _after_ my lesson! Go back to bed for a few hours."

She smirked wickedly at this last insult. But instead of turning away and leaving, Aurora strode casually to the very front of the classroom and plonked herself down on a chair in the corner behind his desk. She picked out a textbook from the dusty bookshelf next to her and began flicking through it nonchalantly.

Snape could do nothing but blink furiously at her from his desk.

"Did you not hear me, _Professor_?" he whispered deadly.

"Oh, I heard you…" she confirmed, her eyes still dashing across the pages. "I'm fine with waiting here."

Snape opened his mouth to continue the argument, but obviously remembered just in time that they were now currently joined by twenty curious teenagers. Seemingly reluctantly resolved that he really couldn't be seen physically dragging another teacher out of his classroom, he gritted his teeth indignantly and pushed out the chair of his desk forcefully - where he commenced the rounds around his classroom.

The hour long lesson seemed to take the entire day. She had never seen Severus so eager to get a class over and done with. Half way through the class and Aurora could not help herself… she made her way through the chairs and desks and casually assisted the somewhat confused students with their Shrinking Solutions. Snape kept catching her eye from across the classroom and shooting poisonous daggers in direction… but he dared not speak his thoughts out loud in front of anybody else.

"Thanks, Professor Sinistra!" Fern McCarthy, a very grateful looking Hufflepuff third-year quipped excitedly at the end of the class - clearly extremely relieved that there was someone to help who wasn't going to make her burst into tears at any given moment. The girl gathered up her schoolbag and skirted out of the icy dungeon classroom with the rest of the ramble.

Sinistra give a half-smile and watched them leave as the door slammed shut behind them. She waited until the clanging steps receded down the corridor before turning to face him.

He was leaning against his desk, arms resting upon it as if he were readying himself to pounce on her, and his face was absolutely livid. She had not seem him this angry in a good while.

"What _on earth_ do you think gives you the right to come into my class and assist with the subject matter when I have not permitted it?" he spat furiously, teeth bared ready to bite. "What do you _think_ the students are going to be talking about for the rest of the week?!"

Sinistra snorted amusedly and folded her arms in defiance. "You place the social lives of the teachers a bit too high on the kiddies' list of priorities, Severus. They'll be more interested in who to snog behind the bleachers at the next Quidditch match."

She did not intend to make an allusion to their own snogging behind the bleachers at the Quidditch match, but the words had spilled out of her mouth before she could take them back. Snape's jaw went rigid.

"Actually…" Sinistra started as he merely continued to glare at in tense silence, "that's what I wanted to talk to you about -"

"I don't _need_ to be debriefed by you about what happened that day," Severus snapped defensively. "It was a moment of complete stupidity on both of our parts, and it meant nothing. That's all I have to say on the matter."

Aurora raised her eyebrow just enough to make him add: "… _what_?"

"Well…" she started as gently as she possibly could. "I think the fact that you've been hiding from me for the past few weeks says something a bit different, don't you think Severus?"

He stalked around to the other side of his desk, where he sat and began getting to work observing the bottles of the students potions which had all been lined up and labelled in front of him.

"No," he answered nonchalantly. "I don't think. And for what it's worth I have not been 'hiding from you'. I have been busy completing that damned stone protection for the Headmaster and going…" he paused mid-sentence and stopped - clearly thinking it best if he didn't continue rambling. Sinistra wondered whether he was going to mention visiting his mother in Azkaban, and she felt the pang of guilt for doing what she did again. With a deep sigh she walked slowly up to where he was distractedly swirling the vials of potion around and observing them in the torchlight, and came to rest directly in front him. It was now or never.

"That wasn't my only reason for wanting to speak with you..." she stated as clearly and matter-of-factly as she could. Snape's black eyes flicked back up toward her.

"Well let's have it so you can finally leave me in peace," he implored.

Aurora bit her lip in trepidation before continuing...

"I think Septima might have feelings for me."

She surveyed him very closely, and by all appearances he almost looked utterly unperturbed by this piece of news. Almost. His jaw gave him away this time… there was a sudden and momentary tightness in his cheeks. Their eyes continued to decipher each other across the desk.

It was a good long ten seconds before he voiced any reaction.

"And you came all the way down here just to receive my blessings and congratulations, how touching..." Severus drawled softly. "If you'd like to leave the wedding invitation in my pigeonhole, I can get to work picking out some porcelain dinnerware for the both of you."

"Severus, don't be a -"

"You needn't bother!" he snapped, sounding possibly even angrier than he did after she had interrupted his lesson. "As if I would give a single damn about what you get up to with behind closed doors with various Arithmancy witches! Is that why you came down here? To inform me that you've made a much anticipated upgrade? I thank you for the happy announcement. I'm glad to see you waltzing around the castle breaking up everyone else's relationships like there's no tomorrow."

"For god's sake, Severus!" Aurora retorted, finally snapping. The man was utterly insufferable in his unmistakable self-consciousness. Oh, he thought he hid it so well that no-one would ever see it, but it was so clear that it almost pulsated out of his pores. "I didn't say it was fucking reciprocated. Considering our partnership meant _nothing_ to you..."

" _It doesn't mean anything to me_!" he corrected vehemently, baring his teeth to their full capacity this time. "That is the point. Fuck her all you want. Crush Charity underneath your boot. It makes not one iota of difference to me."

Sinistra sniffed haughtily.

" _Fine_ ," she said scornfully. "If you'd prefer I kept you out of the way, then that is the welcomed treatment you shall receive from me. I have quite finished trying to be amicable with you. I  _will_ fuck whoever I want."

Severus made a sudden movement as if he were about to object, but clearly decided it was best he didn't. Aurora sighed, feeling completely defeated at his final rejection. There was no getting through to him, not ever. She was a fool for even thinking it. That kiss had definitely been a mistake. The guilt of hers combined with the anger radiating from him now… and then she had to go and drag _Septima_ into their shitstorm...

She marched back through the rows of desks to the back of the class. Before she reached the door handle, however, she turned .

"Just one last thing," Aurora informed him loudly so he could hear her from his desk. "The only reason I kissed you that day at the Quidditch match was to piss Dumbledore off. So don't be concerning yourself about any  _feelings_..."

She wanted to hurt him more than he had ever hurt. She wanted him to feel just a  _shred_ of the anger, the loneliness and the aching that she did, even if it was a complete lie. Her stomach jolted slightly when she was not met with with a furious glare, readying itself for Round Two, instead Severus's face had actually softened. It was not a pleasant kind of softening. It vaguely resembled something like hurt, like she had finally delivered the lowest blow. 

_Good._

Why the bloody hell did it not feel as good as it damn well should?

"Really?" he said, more in way of affirmation than anything else. "Well, that is wonderful news. I am sure it will make everything a lot easier for you and Professor Vector."

She could barely maintain eye contact with him at this stage. The simultaneous empty and full-to-bursting feeling in her stomach was now excruciatingly unbearable. _Just when you thought that your stupid careless words could not make anything feel more uncomfortable, Aurora Sinistra…_

"Snape," she finally managed to spit. "You are just the _most_  infuriating -"

"I have about twenty of these to mark," he interrupted over the top of her. "I also need to store about a hundred of new ingredients that have just arrived from the Apothecary, and I also need to make a trip into the Forbidden forrest to find ingredients even they don't stock… not to mention that blasted protection for the Stone. I cannot stress enough how draining you are currently being on my time." Snape motioned to the door with a casual flick of his wrist. 

Sinistra throw her cloak behind her back and stormed away. 

* * *

He watched her leave resolutely, he heard the door snapping shut in front of him and her footsteps radiating away down the corridor. Try as he might, Snape could not get back to testing the line of potions in front of him… all glimmering in various shades of success and failure. He wished he could take one of them to shrink whatever beast had manifested from within his chest.

He couldn't stay on this path with her. All ties needed to be severed. Up until now Severus had only toyed with the idea of breaking off their arrangements, especially after the Slytherin Gryffindor match… but now… when all he wanted to do was to smash his chair through a window after hearing that had found someone else, and not only that, but that she had used him as some sort of ploy to get at Albus Dumbledore - when all this time he assumed that she had _truly wanted_ to kiss him that day...

What a fool. As if anyone would voluntarily touch him out of sheer choice… kiss him…

These feelings were too real. He could not afford them, not a single drop of them.

He hated her for it. Hated her for taking even a millisecond of his thoughts away from Lily.

Severus felt an uncomfortable tightness in his throat as he mused.

_I thought I'd accepted that fact that I would never be someone's first choice years ago. It was completely inevitable that Sinistra would eventually find someone more attractive, more pleasant, more in her league, more deserving of her attentions… if anything, I should really be surprised that it's taken her this **long…**_

He pulled at his collar frustratingly, trying furiously to stopper the unbearable tightness which was crawling from within his chest and up to his throat. He quickly ended up rolling it back up, however: it felt too vulnerably painful to show even a shred of skin if it was not necessary.

He swore fruitlessly at the seemingly never-ending bottles of Shrinking Solution on his desk. He didn't have time for this. He didn't have time for _any_ of this… he would have to leave all of this, and her, to ponder over later. There were potions ingredients to store away, and potions riddles to be written.

When Severus finally reached the main storeroom, it did not help one bit that one of the first ingredients he pulled out of the piled boxes was a crate of Hellebore. It was almost as if he had inadvertently toppled into a Pensieve. He recalled that day she had stormed into this very storeroom… her hair matted and frequented with the odd twig and leaf… looking positively dishevelled and furious with him in a way that only Borealis could. She had spotted the Hellebore and taunted him with it.

_"Maple syrup? Let's not get innovative, Severus…"_

That tongue of hers. He was surprised that no-one had cut it off in penance for all of her bitey remarks over the years.

And then, to his horror, the jar currently in Snape's increasingly clenched hands gave an almighty _CRACK._ The golden syrup began dripping down the outside of his hand and his sleeve.

"Shit!" he exclaimed underneath his breath and hastily waved his wand to _Evanesco_ the damned thing. He sighed, vaguely considered sending Sinistra the invoice for the ruined item, and dropped the now empty bottle on the floor beside him and leant against the wall to steady his mind for a few moments.

_Enough. It ends now. Focus on keeping Quirrell at bay and ensuring that Lily Potter's son is kept safe. Aurora Sinistra is, and has always been, an imprudent distraction - nothing more._

At the very least, he managed to get half the ingredients in their jars and labelled without breaking another one.

 

 


	14. Much to Rolanda's Dismay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Rolanda and Minerva are somewhat miffed...

" _You're not serious, Headmaster?_ "

"I am afraid, given the events of our last Quidditch match, that it is quite necessary."

Severus witnessed the flying instructor and customary Quidditch referee shoot him a look of complete distrust over the Dumbledore's shoulder. Dumbledore, of course, was onto this.

"But – Severus -"

"He is the best person for the job, as it stands," Dumbledore answered calmly, Severus could see the outline of his beard twitching as he spoke. "I don't suppose you'd want either Minerva or Pomona to referee, seeing as it is a Hufflepuff versus Gryffindor match."

In all actuality, Rolanda Hooch looked like she would very much prefer either of those options to Severus Snape a million times over. She opened her mouth and started, but then closed it again.

When she opened it again to speak, it appeared that she had developed somewhat of a defiance…

"You think I won't be able to handle myself, Albus?" Rolanda said, quite coolly.

Dumbledore moved to the side slightly, Severus saw him smile in a mollifying fashion.

"We all have our strengths, Rolanda. Yours are, in no form, any lesser than Severus's… but he did keep whatever cursed Harry's broom at the first Quidditch match at bay… and, given the circumstances -"

Rolanda would not stop glaring Severus up and down. He wished Dumbledore had not insisted on dragging him down to the staff room to speak with her; he felt ridiculously gauche just standing behind him like a bumbling schoolboy.

Madam Hooch sighed dejectedly.

"Well… I… can you even _ride_ a broom?" she added, clamoring to find something to rebut with.

"Yes, I can ride a broom!" Severus snapped a little too loudly and defensively than he would have liked.

"And you know the rules of Quidditch do you? Know when to _rightfully_ foul people?" she placed so much extra emphasis on 'rightly' that her teeth momentarily showed.

Severus couldn't help but roll his eyes.

"I have been sitting through these damned Quidditch matches for ten years now, you'd hope I would have caught on to how it's played…" he bit tetchily.

Before Hooch could think of another argument, the staff room door swung open once more. Minerva McGonagall entered, followed one of two witches Severus would least likely want to be in a room with at the moment – Septima Vector. The pair caught each other's eyes and looked away hastily.

Dumbledore merely smiled a greeting, but Rolanda was not going to give up.

"Minerva!" she called from the other end of the room. The Head of Gryffindor raised her eyebrow. "Tell me you don't agree with this!"

"With what do I not agree?" Minerva asked interestedly, joining the ever-increasing circle of staff around Dumbledore along with Septima.

"Severus's new ambition to become a Quidditch referee…"

It was clear that was possible the least likely thing that Minerva was expecting to here; she gave a loud, amused laugh. When she was met with a few seconds of silence that indicated that Hooch was, in fact, not joking – she shot several killer glares in both Dumbledore and Snape's direction.

" _Referee?_ " she exclaimed. " _Severus?_ Albus _, w_ hy don't you just hand Slytherin the Quidditch cup and be done with it!"

"This has nothing to do with the cup, Minerva…" Dumbledore started gently – but it was the sight of Septima's entirely skeptical expression that made Severus's face burn with an anger he hadn't felt since this whole conversation had started. "We need someone on hand, on the pitch, who can keep a close eye on Harry Potter; to ensure we do not have a reprieve of last time. That is my final word."

It would appear that he, in very much the same vein as Severus, was getting rather tired of reiterating the same thing over and over again.

"And what about Filius? Has he gone on holidays?" Minerva stormed, clearly utterly convinced that the sole reason Severus volunteered was to sabotage her team.

"Filius is the Head of Ravenclaw - "

" _Severus_ is the Head of Slytherin!" Minerva countered. "Well versed in Defence Against the Dark Arts that he may be, it is still a conflict of interest!"

Dumbledore raised a placating hand to stop the commotion for a moment. "You are forgetting," he started "that this year Severus is in fact not the Head of any House. Professor Sinistra is the acting Head of Slytherin."

"To all intents and purposes – Severus is _still_ the Head of Slytherin!" Minerva continued in her tirade, throwing about her hands like a woman possessed. "The students have no idea of the change, so what does it matter?"

" _Aurora_ is the Head of Slytherin," Septima interjected bitterly, shooting a very dirty look at the Potions master. "She's doing all the work along with teaching classes in the middle of the night and her research, I think she should get a little more recognition…"

"She is being compensated for her duties, just as the other three are!" Severus finally snapped.

"And yet she's not rewarded with a title like the other three are – but you're _perfectly_ happy to keep it!" Septima reposted just as angrily.

" _Enough,_ " Dumbledore's voice immediately restored stillness to the room. All of the teachers were looking around at one another with irritated expressions but not daring to go against the Headmaster's command. "We are getting no where with this in-fighting. Severus has agreed that he we will no way interfere the proper running of the match – you still agree to this, Severus?"

"Yes," Severus replied. Both Septima and Minerva gave an impatient noise of disbelief, and Rolanda merely looked on incredulously.

"Then that's all I have to say on the matter," Dumbledore stated finally and gently. "I may ask other staff to take the reigns on other matches if need be."

Rolanda looked as if she were about to object, but one look from the Headmaster ensured that she merely kept it to a frustrated sigh.

"Fine. But I don't know what I'm supposed to do sitting in the crowd for every match…" she said irritably; she nodded and took her leave out of the staff room door, still mumbling to herself.

Dumbledore and the others watched the door close before he announced: "I am feeling slightly peckish… would you care to walk with me to the Great Hall, Minerva?"

" _What?_ " Minerva objected suddenly, obviously still reeling from the unexpected news that her House rival was going to be in direct control of her Quidditch team. "But I only just got here - "

"Walk with me, will you?"

Upon his insistence, Minerva gave a heavy sigh and shrugged. Severus gazed intensely at the Headmaster as he walked past – pleading with him to stay, to not leave him alone with _her…_ but he merely nodded and smiled.

The silence was so heavy after all but Septima and Severus left that you could penetrate it with a knife. A few seconds of merely standing there and trying to avoid eye contact pushed Severus on toward the door and out of sight, longing for the sanctity of his office. But just as he reached the door mere second after Dumbledore and McGonagall –

"If I find out that you're using this Quidditch match to punish Hufflepuff…"

The suggestion seemed so ludicrous and completely out of the blue that Severus had to stop and turn back in spite of himself.

"Punish _Hufflepuff_?" he uttered bewilderedly, his right hand resting upon the door. "I believe you just might be in the minority, Professor Vector..."

Septima folded her arms defiantly. The longer she glared at him the more it begun to dawn on him what she meant by her seemingly bizarre statement. Vector had been a member of Hufflepuff house in her school years; obviously she had somehow gathered that this was all about getting back at her.

 _Quite the egocentric postulation for a Hufflepuff alumnus,_ Severus thought…

And suddenly he felt so angry that he could not even find the words he wanted to wound her with.

"You may sleep soundly in the knowledge that this has literally _nothing_ to do with you!" Severus snarled angrily, feeling heat rising in his cheeks.

"Not even Rora?" Vector asked weightily, coolly blowing a stray bit of black hair out of her face.

This time Severus strode across the room to get his point across.

"You have a pet name for her already, how very touching," he drawled. "And if need be I will make an Unbreakable Vow with you that this has, and will have, nothing to do with her! The one and _only_ reason I am forcing myself on a broomstick and overseeing students faff around with balls and hoops is to ensure whoever cursed Potter's broom last time is stopped in a more timely fashion this time. Understood?"

Septima merely shook her head as if she had absolutely nothing more to say to him. He sniffed angrily through his nostrils and made to turn with one swish of his cloak.

"I don't understand the attitude, Severus…" She said quietly behind his back. "I mean I know you and Aurora - "

 _Oh, wonderful._ Of course she had to and make this ten times worse and a thousand times more awkward…

"You needn't explain anything," he said with his back to her in a voice of strained and forced calm. Clearly she was attempting to elevate herself above him – to appear the better person – well, he was not going to let her. "Your beloved 'Rora' has always been free to make her own choices, as have I."

 _Not that is was much of a difficult choice for her,_ he thought bitterly.

When she did not continue the conversation any further (thank Merlin), he finally broke free of the lot of them and made his way to his office – determined not to speak to another soul for the rest of the night. He needed peace, he needed quiet… he needed a damn strong sleeping potion.

* * *

Severus reached his office and closed it shut with a satisfying _click_. He rested against it for a while with his eyes closed. The distrust and suspicion that had always surrounded him from day dot had only gone and quadrupled in the space of a single hour…

He could have handled the distrust quite adequately by himself. _That_ he was used to. But Septima apologising to him… standing there and pitying him… he felt reduced to nothing more than a helpless little schoolboy again. He felt frustratingly aggrieved.

How dare she. How dare she get yet another upper hand by apologising to him, when there was no need to apologise at all! Did she think he craved to hear such things? Craved to hear someone speaking to him in a soft and comforting manner like some kind of child?

Severus opened his eyes and was met with a line of seven potion bottle in front of him upon his desk: all different sizes and shapes, some had liquids contained within them, some were currently empty.

At least his part in the protection of the Stone was almost done. At least that was one thing he could cross off his list. He just had to get to work writing some kind of riddle for the thing and he could forget it. He had thought that his idea of a logical puzzle had been rather original and ingenious… most magical folk, especially those of pureblood heritage, were seemingly lacking in the most basic of logical thought and reasoning. It was something that never failed to make himself feel better when he was struggling with the knowledge that one half of him was, and would always be, tainted with his father's blood.

He clicked his tongue as pulled out of a piece of parchment, however. The idea of a logical puzzle had been a good idea at the time, and of course he had no problems in inventing and concocting suitable potions and poisons for the task – but now he had to sit down and write bloody _poetry_ all evening.

Severus sighed despondently, pulled out one of his quills and decided he'd better get to work – at least it would keep his mind off everyone else, off Quirrell and the teacher's suspicions, off Aurora and Septima, off risking his neck for Potter, off his mother shivering and wasting away in her cell… he began scribbling fervently and slowly began to lose himself in his work and his writing…

_To hell with everybody…_


	15. Eileen's Valediction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus is given some unpleasant news. Aurora gets hypothermia.

_Snape spat bitterly on the ground…_

In all honesty, the Gryffindor Hufflepuff match hadn't been the utter disaster that Severus had been expecting it to be. For one, the curser from the previous match had decided not to show their face - which gave him a chance to concentrate keeping upright on his broomstick and to attempt to survey the match. And no one had set fire to him this time: always a positive outcome.

Of course, that insufferable Potter managed to catch the snitch in such ample time as to ensure that the torment did not go on longer than humanly possible. But it was the self-satisfied smirk that Potter had shot him as the Gryffindor team had strutted off the pitch that made Severus's blood begin to prickle against his veins…

Severus finally trudged back up to the castle in quite the ambivalent mood. Darkness had fallen upon the castle and the drizzly rain which had been falling all day had begun to get heavier; the familiar clanging and chinking noises were radiating from the Great Hall as staff and students alike had begun their dinners. Deciding to instead have his dinner in his own quarters tonight to avoid the combined glares of Rolanda and Septima (possibly Minerva too), he turned on his heel and begun to make his way down the stairs when the very same Transfiguration professor came walking hastily toward him.

"Oh, Severus, there you are" Minerva said, seeming quite breathless. "Professor Dumbledore would like a word with you in his office."

Severus halted and turned.

"Problem?" he asked with a slightly raised brow.

"I am not quite sure," Minerva replied, the bitterness from the past couple of days had apparently dissolved. "But he does need to see you immediately - so he tells me."

Evidently she was just as clueless as he was. Quite assured that he could garner nothing else from her - Severus could only nod and comply.

He rapped quickly on the door to the Headmaster's office, which opened immediately. Stepping quietly inside, he instantaneously caught sight of Dumbledore, who was once again sitting at his desk surrounded by piles of letters and parchment. He appeared quite oblivious to Severus's sudden appearance; his eyes were fixed on a piece of paper clenched in his hands…

Severus gave a small cough to signal his presence; the elder wizard's gaze broke away from his desk.

"Minerva informs me that I have been sent for, Headmaster?" Severus stated from the door.

It took a few moments for Dumbledore to answer him.

"Indeed, Severus," he sighed sadly. "Come, sit."

He did as he was bid. Again, Dumbledore's gaze had turned to the parchment before him – his chin resting upon the two points of his fingers as he gazed down upon it through his crescent moon spectacles. Severus waited in respectful silence for a few moments before the silence started to become somewhat uncomfortable, seeing as he had been specifically summoned for what he assumed was a good reason.

"Is this about the match?" he finally asked, throwing caution to the wind. "Did you observe anything untoward amongst the crowd?"

"I did not," Dumbledore said slowly, his gaze still very far away. "Perhaps my presence hindered their intentions, I do not know."

"Then why have you asked me to come here?" Severus pressed further. Skilled Legilimens as he was, there was no denying that the Headmaster was very much preoccupied with something… and he would not have summoned him at dinner time merely to discuss the nonevents of the Quidditch match in which nothing at all happened. Dumbledore finally looked at him – and it appeared that he thought exactly as much.

He pulled out an opened envelope, just as ordinary as all of the others on his desk. He slid it across the table until it came to rest just below the Potions master.

It was addressed to Dumbledore, which made Severus frown in confusion as to why on earth he was presenting mail to him which was not even his in the first place…

"This came addressed to me from the Ministry of Magic," Dumbledore explained gently. "But I got no further than the first few lines before I decided that a mistake has probably been made…"

Still frowning, and very eager to get to the bottom of Dumbledore's skirting around the crux of his issue, Severus pulled out the letter from its covering and flicked it open. He, too, got no further than the first few lines.

_Re: Prisoner 739_

_AZKABAN PRISON_

Severus slammed his hand down upon the rest of the letter, as if to shield himself from it. He felt a rising heat in his throat.

"You do not have to read it in front of me," Dumbledore pressed soothingly. "Take it somewhere private."

"No," Severus replied forcefully, folding up the letter once more and reading no further. "This was addressed to you, mistake or not; you should be the one to read it."

Dumbledore looked as if he were about to reason with him, but upon catching sight of Severus's imploring gaze, he understood. He nodded and took it from him; his eyes flicking from left to right in quick succession. Severus could do nothing but watch, watch him for any hint of confirmation.

He did not give it until he had finished the letter; he placed it gently back into the envelope. Severus waited for the inevitable silent nod.

And it came.

"I am so very sorry, Severus…"

Severus swallowed hard, feeling more uncomfortable than he ever had in his life. He pocketed the official notice without looking at it and nodded.

"Is that all, Headmaster?" he asked, rising from his chair.

"Yes," Dumbledore replied without further unnecessary waffle, which Severus would be forever grateful for. "But I will be here if you need me."

Snape barely heard the last of this sentence before he was out of the office – hastily slamming the door behind him.

* * *

He had paced his office floor so much in the past twenty minutes that he was surprised that the floor had not given way and formed a cavern into the dungeons below. He felt as if his stomach had either disappeared completely, or was full of hot knives - he wasn't sure which…

Several times Severus had sat at his desk and tried to get on with the ever-increasing mounds of work that had piled up over the course of the past few days, but the letter burned hot in his pocket, and a lump burned hot in his throat.

He ended up locking the run-of-the-mill official announcement in his drawer and heading instead to his storeroom, where he pulled out a vial of Calming Draught in the vain attempt to make the knives and the heat and the rising prickling sensations in his chest and face go away. He couldn't be seen acting like this, not ever. The woman had been long dead long ago; her essence had died and withered away the moment she had set foot in that prison. He should have been celebrating the fact that she was no longer suffering, as she had done her entire life. For once in her miserable, sad existence, she was free of chains…

He popped open the top of the vial of pearl-coloured liquid and sculled the entire contains in one gulp.

He certainly did not feel like celebrating…

Severus gathered up several more vials and pocketed them before exiting the storeroom.

Maintaining as much of an unfathomable and impenetrable expression as possible, he made his way swiftly back up to the entrance hall which, thankfully, was mostly deserted.

"Get back to your common rooms! You know the curfew times for first to third years!" he snapped viciously at a couple of second-year Gryffindors who were still mulling around by the very oaken front doors he now wrenched open. He took one last look at their gratuitously affronted faces before he saw someone else shooting daggers at him on the middle of the stairs above them. He couldn't be dealing with Sinistra's involvement at a time like this… he allowed her to glare as he stepped out into the open air.

The rain was now pelting against him as he walked through the grounds. But instead of shielding himself against the icy cold droplets, Severus merely tilted his head back against the flood of water… he closed his eyes as he walked, breathing in the smell of the storm and allowing, willing it to wash everything away. It became harder and harder to walk as the rain had saturated his robes so much that it had began to drag him down in to the mud. He kept on walking.

He had no destination. He wanted to walk, and walk, and walk in the rain until he was so cold and so wet that he could not feel any longer. The warmth of the castle gave him far too much comfortable opportunity to think, and to feel. It would not do.

Out here, it was impossible to decipher just why his cheeks were wet.

He had just reached the outermost parts of the Forbidden forest when he saw a shred of light burst forth about ten meters in front of him, a door had clearly been opened and he had no doubts as to whose door this was. Sure enough, Hagrid's vast outline came charging out at him, underneath his pink umbrella.

"Fang! Inside, yeh dopey thing!" he was calling. Before Severus knew it, a great big dark blur was charging and barking toward him, completely ignoring Hagrid's commands. He tried to take refuge from underneath the canopies of the forest but the stupid thing merely followed at his heels, prompting Hagrid to follow.

"Professor?" Hagrid called; positively stunned to finally decipher whom it was that Fang had galloped to. "What yeh doin' out here? Yer soaked!"

With a jolt of pained realisation, Severus realised that he would soon have to tell Hagrid of the news of Eileen's final demise. The mere thought of it made it impossible for him to look the gamekeeper, one of the only people in the entire world who truly cared for his mother, in the eye…

"Come inside, sir!" Hagrid yelled through the howling winds and downpour.

"Get back home, Hagrid," Snape replied as loudly as he could – but still quite sure that Hagrid did not hear him. He seemed to get the gist when Snape turned on his heel and disappeared into the forest; he half expected to be followed, but thankfully Hagrid had seen sense not to press him. He remained behind with one firm grasp on Fang's collar, the rain splattering down and making tiny popping noises all over the awning of his umbrella.

He trudged further and further into the forest, until the only rain that pelted down upon him was the residue from the treetops. He walked until his legs became sore. It was at this point in which he fell to the ground and downed the rest of the vials.

A callous sort of calm swept over him… he felt his eyelids get so heavy that he could barely keep them open anymore. The last thought he had before he was lulled into the most sterile, pitiless sleep of his life was of his mother: cold and alone in a cell, punished for the murder she had never committed, chastised for suffering through days worse than hell, substituting agony for agony.

And it was more for waste, than for death, that had made him want to dissolve into the ground and join her.

* * *

She waited until all students were safely out of visual observation and pulled open the door; squinting into the blistering and inundated dark, she cursed to herself.

What on earth could have been so important as to call him out into a storm such as this? At this hour? Sinistra stepped outside and closed the doors behind her, sheltered as she was by the ridges of the castle the wind was now blowing a gust that sent the rain in a horizontal tirade against the side of her face.

 _"_ _Lumos,"_ she said as she held her wand straight in front of her. The spell hardly made a difference; in fact all it appeared to be doing was momentarily blinding her with the contrast.

"Severus!" she shouted as loudly as she could, but of course this was fruitless. Her heart was hammering against her ribcage though she could not for the life of her understand why. She _had_ to find him… again, not knowing why. He could very well have merely gone to the gate and Disapparated somewhere. Pulling up the hood of the cloak to attempt to shield whatever she could away from her face, Sinistra took a deep breath and broke off into a run.

The water hit her like thousands of icy needles as she bolted – Aurora had given up trying to see just where it was she was headed and focused instead on attempting to keep her heels out of the mud.

"Severus!" she yelled once again into nothingness, waving her lit wand around to act as some kind of beacon. Her clothes were soaked through at this stage, and the mud had begun to fill up her boots… she suddenly felt a bit stupid; soaked to the bone with her hair as wet as the mermaids in the lake. There was no way he would have just ventured out here for no reason. He had to have Disapparated to some place warm, and dry, and here she was – running through it all like a drenched moron.

"SEVERUS!" 

Suddenly in the near distance she saw a light flicker, and automatically changed her direction toward it. As Aurora drew nearer, she noticed that someone had come out to meet her.

"What's bin happenin' tonight, honestly!" came Hagrid's booming voice through the darkness; he had obviously noticed her flailing her wand around. "Why are yeh all runnin' around out 'ere! And teachers!"

" _What?_!" Sinistra yelled back as loud as she could. " _Did you see Severus_?"

" _What?!"_

" _DID YOU SEE SEVERUS_?" she bellowed at the top of her lungs.

"Went inter the forest just a few minutes ago!" He boomed. "But don't – come in – PROFESSOR!"

But Aurora had already broken off again; she flew into the forbidden forest as fast at the mud and the sliding would allow her. It wasn't long before Hagrid was out of sight… she had no idea whether he would follow or not, but at this point it was so cold and so wet that she had lost all sense of logic and reason.

Her wand was lit again, and she willed her brain to think of a spell that would reveal his location to her (and also one which would ready a nice warm bath for her when she returned to her quarters) – but this was fruitless. The rain was hammering down from the trees with such force that she was simultaneously blinded and deafened. It was this earsplitting, glaring torrent which also prevented Sinistra from hearing the deep growls behind her.

The wolf pounced toward her and took her completely by surprise; Sinistra cried out as a pair of salivating jaws clamped down upon her calf. Thankfully it had merely been a warning nip, and the wolf and its pack momentarily backed away as she turned to face them… but their jaws were still very much cavernous and their stances very much hostile.

" _Stupefy!"_ she shrieked automatically toward the first wolf she could get a good focus on. It was either the blast of blinding red light, or the sight of seeing one of their own being dealt such a rough hand by the intruder, she was not sure, but just as quickly as they had come – the pack had retreated. The completely unprepared Astronomy teacher thanked her lucky stars that they had just been ordinary wolves… as opposed to the other sort that lurked within this dark green abyss. And whether it was the abrupt jolt of reality (or the abrupt gash that had just been ripped out of her leg) she was not sure, but Aurora suddenly recalled the words to the spell that had until now escaped her.

" _Homenum revelio,"_ she commanded into nothingness.

It was as if her wand had transfigured itself into a magnet. It begun to pull heavily toward the right of her, willing her to move in that direction…

 _It fucking better be you._ She thought.

The only issue now, apart from the torrential rain, was that the direction in which she was headed was completely blocked by brambles and thorns of every kind. Now not only was Aurora soaked to the bone and extremely muddy, but her entire face and hands were covered in cuts and grazes. Twice she tripped over the roots of a tree or a particularly well-hidden shrub, and once she had sunk knee-deep into a murky puddle.

At long last the wand's magnetism began to wane. Aurora _Lumos'd_ the tip of it once more and squinted desperately around her, it wasn't until she took another tentative step that she tripped over something substantially larger than a shrub.

" _Severus_?"

She turned over the cloaked man observed to be hunched against the tree, sitting on the forest floor; he was indeed the very person she had been searching for. It was apparent that he was out cold… or least, out cold at best. She involuntarily reached out and felt for a pulse and breathed a sigh of relief.

"Oi!" Aurora commanded, brutally trying to shake him awake. "Wake up, you idiot! I'm drenched here! Argh…" but if she were frozen, it was nothing to the way Severus looked; his face was stark white, and his lips blue. She was half way through covering his body with her cloak before she realised it probably would have done more damage than good – seeing as it was practically waterlogged and now seemed to weight a tonne. A set of clinking noises drew her attention to the ground and, eyes widened, she saw several potion vials tumble out of his hand.

"Shit," she cursed – him more than anything else. The potion he had obviously ingested could have been bloody anything, and as it was probably Severus who had brewed it then it was likely to be exceptionally potent. She flicked the light from her wand out without incantation and pointed it at him. " _Rennerv_ -"

But she stopped midway and decided to drag him out of harms way first before reviving him. She doubted he would be in much of a state to run out of the forest with her.

" _Mobilicorpus!"_

And within a flash, she was attempting desperately to retrace her steps, this was made all the more difficult due to the fact that Sinistra no longer had to light to see anything, as he wand was trained on levitating Severus's body through the air behind her.

After about ten minutes of constant limping through the wet grasses and brambles while simultaneously ensuring that the wizard looming behind her did not hit himself on any of the trees and wincing from her bloodied leg, Sinistra saw a light in the distance, and she could have sworn she heard a vague voice.

" _Hagrid!"_

"Professor?" she finally heard as she got closer. Aurora heard thumping footsteps as the rain began to finally subside, and soon both giant and witch caught sight of one another. Hagrid's eyes flicked upward and he gasped.

"What 'appened to Professor Snape?!"

"Can we use your house, Hagrid?" Aurora asked, ignoring him. "I need to get him dry."

"'o course," Hagrid replied straight away, gesturing ahead. "Go, go."

And finally, when they were all inside the warmth and comfort of the cabin, Aurora shrugged off her cloak and carefully levitated Severus down upon Hagrid's colossal bed.

"What 'appened?" Hagrid asked again from behind her after he had gathered up her cloak in a bundle in his arms. Sinistra began to swipe her wand over his lifeless body, blasting hot air over his clothes.

"I found him like this," she replied without looking, her dark brows furrowed in concentration.

"D'yeh think it were sommet in the forest that got 'im?" asked Hagrid worriedly.

Sinistra shook her head.

"I don't know." She lied. _I wish it was…_ she thought.

"Oh, Professor! Yer bleeding! Nothin' bit yeh, did it?" he exclaimed suddenly, but she waved his concern away.

"No, no, just a scratch."

"Shouldn' yeh revive him?"

It was the first time Aurora had turned around to look at him since she had entered the cabin.

"I'm leaving that 'til last…" she murmured darkly before turning back. Truth be told she did not want to be anywhere near him when he regained consciousness; the fact that she had been stupid enough to follow him into the forest, in the rain, just on a whim was embarrassing enough to her alone – let alone Snape, who probably would never let her forget it.

Eventually, some colour began to return to Severus's face and lips; his clothes were now slightly damp as opposed to sopping. He looked as if he were merely in a deep slumber. Aurora lifted the charm and sighed.

"Right…" she said decisively. She vaguely considered reviving him from the doorway so she could bolt as soon as he opened his eyes… but then again she had not known what, if any, potion he had taken and the effects of it. She felt it wouldn't be at all responsible of her to leave him here with Hagrid without being absolutely sure that he was not permanently incapacitated.

" _Rennervate,"_ she whispered gently from the bedside. A pulse of red light radiated from the walls of the cabin and she and Hagrid waited with their breaths held.


	16. Knight in Damp Armour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aurora comes to the rescue. Severus is momentarily confused. Hagrid receives some bad news.

Almost instantly, Severus's eyelids began to flicker. His eyes slowly opened and he gazed at the ceiling in a very unfocused manner. Aurora hesitated and then reached out to touch his arm, he instantly jolted away from it, but at least his gaze finally appeared somewhat attentive.

"Severus? Can you hear me?"

His obsidian eyes blinked a few times in her direction, desperately trying to rid them of confusion; when they finally began to focus, the line between his eyebrows grew much deeper.

"Where -" he said before stopping and clearing his hoarse throat. "Where the hell have you been?"

Sinistra was momentarily baffled by his remark.

"Where the hell have _I_ been?" she repeated heatedly. " _Me_?"

"Did someone push you in the lake? Or did you forget that you need to disrobe before you have a bath?" he said, apparently oblivious to where he was or his recent journey into the forest.

And suddenly the Astronomy professor became painfully aware of not only how she must've looked – but also how she felt. Her hair was still dripping great icy drops of rainwater down her back and chest, and her leg suddenly pounded with pain. She also began to shiver violently.

"Tea, professors?" Hagrid suddenly quipped in from behind her. Severus jumped at the sound of another voice in the room and sat up violently. Everything seemed to hit him at once.

"What happened?" he demanded, regarding his surroundings rapidly. "Why is _Hagrid_ here? Why am I in bed? In… in _Hagrid's bed_? What have you -"

He stopped mid-sentence; something had obviously clicked and come back to him. Aurora waited patiently for any explanation but none came.

"… I'll get yer tea…" Hagrid said quietly, and Aurora was thankful that the painful silence had been broken. Severus continued to stare into space as she watched on, a curled-up shivering mess in one of Hagrid's chairs.

"Well, if you are just going to sit there gawping, you may as well put on my cloak for God's sake," Severus insisted firmly after a few moments, he sat up and pulled off the now nearly dry garment and threw it at her. Aurora hastily wrapped it around her, trying not to catch the vague scent of him on it. As he sat up his eyes rested upon something on the ground.

"You do realise that you are bleeding profusely," he exclaimed abruptly.

Aurora looked down.

"Mm. It appears so," she replied nonchalantly. Severus tutted in frustration; he reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out his wand.

"May I?" he queried; Sinistra took that as a request for her to lift up the hems of her robes, she shrugged and showed him the bite on her calf.

Severus hissed in what appeared to be a rare show of sympathy. "Are you _incapable_ of performing healing charms?" he asked severely, obviously attempting to ensure that his good nature card was wiped clean once more.

Aurora glared at him. "To be honest, Severus, I was more concerned with getting this cataleptic _idiot_ of a wizard out of the forest alive. But thank you for your kind concern."

He didn't answer her, his wand merely traced the cuts on her leg as he began muttering to himself; slowly but surely, the pain began to subside from her leg as the dark skin of hers began to sew itself together. When he had finished he pocketed his wand once more, and leant back upon the pillows on the bed.

"Did you see what bit you?" he asked curiously.

"A wolf, I think," Aurora answered; rubbing her leg which was now prickling like a freshly formed scar.

Severus frowned at her, concernedly.

"You are very sure it was a _wolf_ that bit you, are you?"

Aurora sighed exasperatedly.

"Yes, Severus," she retorted sardonically with a raised brow. "I am fairly certain that I have not been turned into a werewolf. But, you know, time will tell..." Her expression darkened. "What were you doing in that forest?"

"That does not concern you," he bit tetchily, looking away and sighing as if she had intruded on his thoughts. How he had the gall to say that when she had just been wading up to her neck in mud and accosted by a pack of wolves incensed her.

"I think it very much _concerns me_!" she snapped as quietly as she could with Hagrid still there. "I ran out into the bloody apocalypse to find you! I was bitten by a fucking _wolf_!"

"And did I specifically ask you to come fumbling after me and stick your nose in where it doesn't belong?" Severus snarled, sitting up fully now, their faces were mere inches apart and both pairs of eyes blazed into each other.

"It's thanks to me that you're not dead from your own idiocy!"

"Did it ever cross your minuscule mind that I _wanted_ to be where I was? Don't tell me that you of all people have developed an insufferable hero-complex, please, I couldn’t stand it."

Aurora was itching to slap him; she might well have done if they were not currently guests in the house of someone who might just have frowned upon such things.

"You are the most ungrateful son of a -"

"Apparently my mother is dead. Satisfactory explanation, or shall I find something else to shut you up?"

She had never been so glad to be stopped from ending a sentence in her entire life. Aurora mentally swallowed those words and lit a figurative match upon them in her belly.

"I… I'm…" she started, but was too completely baffled by how to treat his sudden honest outburst to continue.

"Don't…" Severus said – saving her the trouble by holding up a pleading hand. " _Don't_."

They were saved the trouble from any more awkward conversation by Hagrid entering from the kitchen and placing a tray complete with three steaming mugs of hot tea and what looked like a treacle tart on the table in front of the bed.

"Here yeh go professors," he said kindly as he began to cut the tart. Aurora continued to stare concernedly at Severus, but he was looking anywhere but.

"So what was going on out there tonight, anyways?" Hagrid asked, offering the tart to both teachers who both shook their heads – he placed it back looking rather disheartened. "Yeh both'll catch yer death!"

Before she could attempt to construct an answer, she saw Severus's eyes fix back upon her, he gave her the slightest shake of his head before he focused on his tea.

"False alarm. We were told someone had wandered off…" Aurora answered loosely, feeling that the explanation was so dull that Hagrid wouldn't want to probe any further.

"Ah," Hagrid nodded, sipping at his cup. He gave a satisfied exhalation before adding: "Professor Quirrell, was it?"

" _Quirrell_? Why would you think it was Quirrell?" Severus piped up quickly, his face looking extremely animated, especially when it was so blaringly contrasted against his previous state.

Hagrid shrugged. "Well, I seen 'im quite a bit round these parts lately. Always hangin' round the forest. But I assume tha', yeh know, it's probably ter plan all his Defence Against the Dark Arts lessons isn't it? Suppose he didn' have much reason to head off looking for topics in the Forbidden Forest when he was Muggle Studies professor…"

For Aurora, the only concerning thing about what Hagrid had just said was the way in which she connected Muggle Studies with Charity Burbage, and consequently associated Charity Burbage with Septima Vector, which suddenly set off a pang of inexplicable guilt from somewhere within her… she was far too busy attempting to decipher just why she felt so guilty to notice just how concerned Severus now looked.

"So, er… yeh alright there, sir?" Hagrid asked Snape tentatively, avoiding his eye.

"I've told you to stop calling me that," Severus warned.

"Ah, sorry… but I mean… what happened to yeh? If yeh don' mind me askin' that is - "

"I do mind," replied Severus coolly.

"Severus…" Aurora started.

Hagrid coughed and gathered up everyone's cups and placed them back upon the tray. "Well, yeh rest there as long as yeh want…" he said kindly, before hastily returning to the kitchen, where he was making so much noise that Aurora could have sworn he was doing it deliberately.

"Where do you think you're going?" she asked as Severus began to gather himself up hastily and sat himself on the edge of the bed.

"I'm going to bed. My own bed."

Aurora bit her lip as she observed him. She didn't know quite what to make of his behaviour – though she rarely ever did.

"Did she…" Aurora cleared her throat, "… I mean, was it recent?"

Severus's chest rose and fell heavily before he answered her, reluctantly. "I would say it has been no more than a few hours."

Sinistra closed her eyes empathetically and shook her head. "Oh, Sev…"

"What is it about the word ' _don't_ ' that you do not understand?" he said, his eyes flashing with painful anger. "I _don't_ need you make it worse, Borealis. Is shutting up for once too much to ask of you?"

"Fine," she relented, but not in her usual haughty manner, she didn't think it quite right when sitting in front of a grieving person after having lost their mother – though whether he really was grieving was almost impossible to tell. He was hidden to the world. If it wasn't for that singular, aching thought in the back of her head as she looked upon his impenetrable face… if there had not been just that millisecond of a flicker of desperation in his eyes… she would have turned away and not given it a second thought.

She reached out and brushed his hand. Her fingertips brushed over the top of his knuckles as she webbed them out and tightened her grip around his so gently that it was almost imperceptible. Severus's breathing became noticeably faster as he looked down at their entwining hands, but his expression remained ever unfathomable.

" _Aurora_ …" he whispered upon exhalation. "I said -"

Sinistra shook her head and released her hold. She made a zipping motion across her mouth – and it was about the only time she had ever willed him to read her thoughts.

_You're an infuriating bastard, but Merlin help me I want to be near you…_

And whether it was that cacophonous inner declaration, or just to cease the awkward silence, she did not know, but Severus got up from the bed and brushed past her shoulders. His hand brushed her shoulder blade so lightly, and so fleetingly, that it was absolutely impossible to tell whether the touch had been deliberate or not. It maddened her. She had been bold enough to reach out and hold his hand, for Merlin's sake: was it too much to ask for a slither of affection to be returned? Even if it was just in gratitude for what she had done?

Severus paid her no more attention, however, and was currently hauling the door to the cabin open. 

"Goodnight, Hagrid," he said briskly from the doorway, but he said it too quietly - and there was so much noise coming from the kitchen that Hagrid obviously did not hear him. He turned to the Astronomy professor and looked her up and down. 

"You might want to take that off before you go walking amongst the students…"

Aurora looked down and suddenly remembered that what she was wearing did not, in fact, belong to her. She whirled his black cloak over her head and passed it to him; Severus took in his hands.

"I suggest warming yourself up before you follow me," Severus said. "And see Madam Pomfrey about your leg. I don't want it all on _my_ head if you leave it to become infected and it has to be amputated."

Aurora gave a thin smirk through her saturated curtain of dark dreadlocks. "Bit of a shit witch...” 

"You know very well that you are an extremely talented witch," Severus replied without missing a beat, obviously too fast for comfort as he was now avoiding her gaze. He cleared his throat and Aurora gave an amused snort. 

“Of course I know I am,” she replied. “Just my little joke.” 

“I see… and… thank you… thanks,” he said, fumbling on his words a bit as he always did when he wanted to say something that he couldn’t. “Just get yourself warm.”

"You'll be alright?" Sinistra asked, throwing caution to the wind (which, incidentally, was now howling around him). Severus didn't answer her; his eyes merely glinted in the firelight radiating from Hagrid's home, and with one last look and a flick of black hair – he turned away.

Aurora closed the door and rested her forehead upon on it for a while. It was only when she heard thunderous footsteps behind her that she remembered that she wasn't alone.

"Yeh alight, professor?" Hagrid asked concernedly behind her. Sinistra snapped around from the door and tried to shake it.

"Yep. Fine."

Ten minutes later she was curled up on Hagrid's couch, swirling yet another hot mug of steaming and comforting tea in her palm. Rain pelted once more against the window outside.

"Yeh went out ter find him, didn' yeh?" asked Hagrid from the chair opposite her. Sinistra opened her mouth and it hung there for a moment… despite Severus's subtle little shake of the head, she saw absolutely no reason to keep anything from the groundskeeper. He was always nothing but honest, and kind; she felt positively serpentine being anything other than honest to him in return.

"Yeah." She finally answered, taking a long sip.

Hagrid's expression transformed into a mixture of confusion and esteem. "Running around in the rain, catchin' a death of cold, I dunno… yeh must really like him!" he said with a bemused smile.

"His mother died," Aurora blurted out without thinking – more to deflect the feelings that Hagrid was currently picking out of her chest than anything else. Hagrid suddenly made a very odd noise that she could not decipher.

"Whose mum?" he inquired quickly with a break in his voice. Aurora frowned.

"Severus's. The idiot we were just talking about."

And she instantly felt as though, yet again, pure Aurora style, she had put her foot in it yet again; for Hagrid's face froze… one could only determine that he was still living by the rising and falling of his chest, and the glistening in his eyes which were becoming more noticeable by the second.

"Did you…" Aurora started, though almost too afraid to ask. Getting into the personal business of others was certainly not a pastime that she enjoyed. "Did you know her or something?"

The mug that Hagrid was holding fell to the ground with a deafening thud, making her jump. He continued to stare into space, looking as if he was fighting very hard against something very internal.

"Bit… bit late now…" he whispered into the fireplace. "N' I need ter… ter feed Fang his… thing…"

"Mmm…" she said slowly, her eyes still trained on his struggling face. She had never been quite apt at comforting; in fact, she thought it a shame that Hagrid was so good at it – and yet now here he was, longing for someone to do the same, and he had ended up with her.

"Well… goodnight, then..." Sinistra said quietly and pathetically at the door, before clicking it shut as gently as she could. The rain drizzled upon her damp hair as she stood in the doorway for a few moments.

 _What could possibly have moved him so much as to act that way?_ She thought, frowning at the cracked wood in front of her eyes. Was he that fond of Severus? Was that why Severus didn't want him to know of his mother's death – because Hagrid would be relentless in his attempt to comfort? To mollycoddle?

Before she had even turned around to venture quickly back up to the castle, she heard the smashing of a mug upon the floor inside the cabin, followed by a great howl, filled with so much pain and anguish that her bones rattled to the core. 

Aurora backed away from the door so quickly that she almost tripped over a barrel of rotten lettuce (no doubt Flobberworm fodder). Steadying herself and the barrel, she then did the most cowardly thing she could have thought of doing: she turned and hastily ran back to the castle, the rain now threatening to engulf her once again as it has done a mere hour ago.

Upon her return to her own quarters, Aurora had spent so long lying in her bath, gazing into candlelit blank space, that the once soothing and comforting bathwater was giving her the very same chills as the rain had done just hours ago. She eventually shifted from the bath to her bed, where she stared through the arched glass window facing her (dark and dripping and beaten in the harsh weather outside) for what felt like hours - regretting now that she was so atrociously bad at emptying her mind. She wondered briefly, however, just how successful Occlumency lessons would be if given by the person who had already invaded and infected every portion of her mind.

If he attempted it now, right now, he would see himself in every single thought she possessed. And she would rather die than divulge that to him. 

Sinistra slept eventually; completely unaware that this very same person lay several floors below her, wide-awake, thinking almost the same thing. 


	17. Her Domain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus knew that this kind of thing happened, but he certainly was not expecting it to happen to him.

Severus bloody well _knew_ that she would open her mouth and tell Hagrid everything that he had explicitly told her not to! For the next week the gamekeeper had been attempting to corner the Potions Master, tears welling in his eyes whenever he looked upon him, in what Severus was sure would be a completely unnecessary show of emotion and weakness. It was unbearable, the thought of Hagrid, the thought of _anyone_ , offering him their deepest condolences over his mother. Wanting to _talk_ to him. _Comfort_ him. Urgh. 

Only Dumbledore and Borealis had known… and only Borealis and Hagrid had been alone together. It was this approximation alone that gave Severus cause to shoot daggers at her at every available opportunity. Her and Septima.

He did not have time to deal with this outpouring from the staff while he had to keep a simultaneous eye on Quirrell and Potter. While Hagrid had been trying to get his attention at every available opportunity, Quirrell had apparently taken to avoiding his eye altogether.

He had seen Hagrid enter the Great Hall for supper that very frosty and chilly night, and so Severus hastily gulped down his tepid tea and headed out into the halls instead. The coldness felt oddly comforting to him in comparison to the relative warmth of the Great Hall. He liked to feel the sting of the winter on his face, it distracted him from everything else.

Well. Almost everything.

He had half an hour to spare before his usual retreat to his study and he knew how he was about to spend it…

When he finally reached the top of the Astronomy tower, he had not quite expected such a sight to meet him… Professor Sinistra was clearly quite unaware of his quiet entrance into her domain, for she was in the middle of the most extraordinary dance Severus had ever seen.

She looked… there was really no other word for it… absolutely awe-inspiring. The snow fell hard around her in the darkness as she flicked her arms back and forth, swirling her wand in complicated patterns and arrangements. Her body twisted around her maroon robes, contorting the tiny universe that pulsed around her. Stars and planets erupted from wandtip and hands and thrusted themselves around the ceilings to unveil various glittering constellations and brilliantly coloured galaxies. She danced around the comets as some omnipotent interstellar being - her ethereal power bursting forth. Sparkling lights from her magic scattered itself upon stone and skin, ingested into lungs and veins, hypnotising every waking synapse…

Her back was bent and her eyes were closed, she was muttering fast incantations underneath her breath as a thousand more stars scattered themselves around the room and began to glow purple and blue from their carefully selected points. Severus momentarily forget why he had come all the way up here, he wanted to watch her just a few moments more and then he would remember.

This positively magical act came to an abrupt cessation when her eyes opened briefly and scanned the room to come to rest on the Potions master standing like a complete idiot by the door.

“Gitface!” she gasped, her wand clanging to the floor. “You could have knocked. Fuck.”

He used the time in which she clamoured after her wand to compose himself before answering.

“As a matter of fact, I did. I was not expecting you to be -”

So enrapturing, so hypnotising, so…

“- gyrating yourself all over the place” was the answer he settled on.

Aurora gave an unashamed snort.

“It’s a star mapping spell, Severus - for when the cloud cover makes telescopic observations impossible. Which in Scotland happens at an infuriatingly high rate. It requires a kind of magic possibly not even you could do… took me years of practice at the Academy.”

“Of contemporary dance?” he was recovering quite well from the aforementioned glitch in his system if he did say so himself. “I am not sure I’d want to devote my time to such frivolity.”

“ _Is_ there a reason for you triggering my homicidal urges, or can I just throw you off this tower regardless?”

Severus could not help the slightest of smirks, before the reasoning of visit came back to him.

“I _told_ you not to tell Hagrid about… her,” was all he could manage. It had been a week and he still refused to believe that he had ever had a mother, let alone one that had died in a cell in the middle of Azkaban prison. “Now I have a bumbling gamekeeper following my every step, just begging me to shed tears that will never come. You will not interfere in my personal life again!”

The more and more he spoke, the angrier and more emotional he was feeling. Severus had not planned to storm in and yell at her right off the bat – but by the way she looked, it appeared his words had done the job, she looked absolutely livid.

“ _Right_. I’ll bear that in mind the next time you decide to fall unconscious in the middle of the Forbidden forest in the freezing rain and need your life saving. A ‘thank you, Borealis’ would have done nicely but telling me to fuck off works just as well I suppose!”

She aggressively turned her back to him and started jabbing her wand angrily in the air, much more fervently than before. Instead of the graceful dance of stars, they began to flicker and fade away before their very eyes…

“ _Shit_ ,” she cursed under her breath as she clearly struggled to maintain the calm required for her magic. After a few more moments of cursing and vanishing planetary systems Aurora turned and flung her wand at him, missing him only due to his reflexes.

“Why must you skulk into every corner of my life and ruin everything?!” she demanded viciously.

“ _Me_?” repeated Snape with a raised brow, her wand swinging from his hand. “You are the one who continually fails to control yourself. Who follows where she is not wanted. Who speaks secrets to people she shouldn’t!”

“I _saved your life_ , you ungrateful little shit!”

“And I thanked you for it!”

It was Sinistra’s turn to raise an eyebrow.

“ _When_ , pray tell,” she whispered with a deadly air about her, “have you _ever_ thanked me in your entire existence?”

She hadn’t noticed… thought Snape with a sudden drop in his stomach. She hadn’t noticed a slither of his gratitude…

“I…” he stumbled. “I _am_ … I am thankful!”

Something changed in Aurora’s fierce gaze. “Are you?” she asked.

She was a foot from him now; her visible breath from the bitter cold washed over Severus’s face as if she had smoked it and blew it into him. He had to close his eyes momentarily.

Unfortunately, when he opened them again she was still as very much unbearably hypnotic as she had been when he had entered the Astronomy tower.

“ _Are you_?” Aurora asked again, but in no more than a whisper. She straightened up to full height and merely opened her lips a few inches, where they hung for mere moments, waiting to deliver another insult or another smirk, or both. “Kiss me.”

“Sorry?”

Severus’s ears must have been ringing so much from their loudly heated argument that he had misheard her.

“I said kiss me,” Aurora commanded plainly and unapologetically. “Do something for me.”

 _For her_ …

Severus froze, struggling to find words that never came. He willed his chest to stop rising and falling in such quick succession – if only to mirror her sheer nonchalance in dealing with him.

There was, however, a baffling sense of relief washing over him. Nothing in her words had been so cloudy or unfathomable that he had to decipher what they meant, which in turn put him at risk at looking foolish or being set up for rejection. It had been a clear command. And he could tell just by looking at her that she was not toying with him, not teasing as was her usual behaviour. Her eyes willed him forward.

Thankfully Aurora met him halfway.

The cold and the winter were soon forgotten as he walked into her body and slowly pressed his cold lips against her burning hot ones, almost at once her teeth began making tiny little painful indents in his lips. He allowed himself to be backed across the tower and into the wall, his head giving an almighty thud against the one of the great stone pillars as Aurora pinned him against her. She leant into the angle of his body and entwined her fingers around the black curtains of hair, pulling his face toward her with such potency that it sent electricity firing through his scalp.

The kisses and bites continued in quick little successions before becoming deeper, innate, he could hear her breathing her life-force into his before she released him. The way the sparkling planets and stars moved about their heads rendered Severus almost dumbfounded about what had happened.

“Septima…” was the first thing that rose to the top of his mind. “What about Septima?”

Sinistra smirked shrewdly before him. “I’m not all heartless you know. There was never anything between Septima and me. I was trying to make you jealous and apparently succeeded rather well...”

“You were?” Snape replied, appearing far too surprised and certainly feeling far too delighted. “Why?”

“Ah, that's secret Aurora business…” she whispered, gaining distance on him yet again.

“Then what is this?” Severus stopped her in her tracks. He needed to make sure. Sinistra scoffed and shrugged.

“This…” she started as she swept her long, slender fingernails through his black, greasy hair unashamedly; though he was starting to grow all too aware of just how oily it was tonight the more she… Oh, but just the sensation of nails on his scalp made him instantly forget such intrusive thoughts…  
  
“This is just this,” she shifted him toward her desk, “and this…” she lay him down surprisingly gently considering her usual way of going about things. “… I don’t see why you need to constantly question what ‘ _this’_ is, Gitface.”

 _Fair point_ , thought Severus but dared not say it as she straddled his lap upon the desk and began to tackle his labyrinth of buttons.

“How do you feel?” Aurora asked him curiously from her position above him. 

Severus thought it a rather odd question, she could plainly _feel_ how he felt in his current state, he saw no reason to verbalise it.

“I feel…”

But it wasn’t until he was readying himself for a sarcastic reply that the true weight of her question hit him. How did he feel? No-one had ever genuinely asked him that question before. And considering the particularly god-awful few weeks he had had in what was otherwise a god-awful life, he felt horribly choked. He could not answer her.

“You feel awful,” Sinistra answered his question for him, clearly she had absolutely no use for Legilimency. “I’ve felt the same thing. But I know ways that make the pain bearable.”

“How?”

The stupid word stumbled out of his mouth before he could catch it. So he now was just blindly divulging his inner pain to the woman before him without even realising he was. For fuck’s sake, she was a master at this.

Borealis smiled almost too lovingly to be the real Borealis.

“I’ll show you if you agree,” she said, forcing the hairs all over Severus’s body to stand on end.

“I am perfectly aware of what is required to bring myself momentary pleasure,” Severus bit scathingly.

Aurora laughed.

“I don’t mean boring, physical pleasure. Pleasure is pedestrian. It doesn’t truly satisfy me…”

Her eyes glinted in the starlight.  

“… _pain_ , on the other hand…”

It was the first time Severus had struggled against her since she had commanded him to bring their lips together. 

“What?” he asked, positively panic stricken. “I’m not going to hurt you!”

“I don’t mean me.”

“ _Me_? You want to hurt…”

Oh, of course Severus knew that this kind of thing happened; he was not completely sexually naive, despite Aurora being his only partner in that department (the fact that he managed to find anyone who wanted him in that capacity at _all_ was a miracle in itself… not to mention that partner being such a striking, intelligent woman such as Professor A. N. Sinistra). But it had never been something that Severus had ever remotely considered experiencing himself. It was too complex. Too labyrinthine. And didn’t he have enough pain in his life already? Why add to the trauma? He had barely gotten the hang off the 'pedestrian pleasure’ thing that she talked so scathingly of…

“What on earth makes you think,” he started cautiously “that I will find such a thing satisfying?”

Aurora considered him, brushing a thin, dark finger across her chin as she did so. When she spoke, it was as if she were in the middle of one of her classes.

“Because I think you crave intensity,” she smiled, knowingly. “But you still want to feel like you’re in control. You’ll be completely in control of this. You’ll have the power to stop, or to increase the intensity until you almost cannot bare it, you can allow yourself to feel… you can disallow it… I just…”

She paused.

“… I just think it might something you’d actually enjoy for once. To give me your burdens for once, to trust me with them just for a while.”

As she spoke, Sinistra clawed at the exposed piece of skin on his arm that she had managed to break free from his suit of cotton armour so hard that Severus hissed with the unexpected pain. When he offered no such protest to speak of, she seemed to decide to run with it.

“My office,” Aurora ordered. “Take that off while you’re at it” she jabbed a finger at the top half of him, and usually he would have _highly_ objected, but the light was so dim that Severus was sure that she would not take one look at his skinny, pallid body and want to run a mile.

He had never undressed in front of her before. In front of _anyone_ before. Usually when they had met in the past, it was very short and very clothed – save for the necessary pieces of equipment required to do the job.

And yet, as uncomfortable as this would have made him, to the point where he would have point blank refused to do so in the usual context, Severus found now that with Aurora standing staunchly at the door, her burning eyes fixed upon him with a clear expectation that he would do as he was told - he was uninhibited. Almost free.

Almost. He was sure he would never get to the point of being _completely_ free. But this was a relaxing change nevertheless.

He took out his wand and made to run it down the length of his chest to undo the tiny little buttons that kept him locked out of the world, before Sinistra stopped him by holding up a single finger.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “Without magic.”

“But, surely. I mean it will take - ”

“I don’t care how long it will take.” Aurora answered simply, but gently. “I want to see you undress.”

And so painstakingly, meticulously, Severus began to fiddle with each and every button his fingers came into contact with. And slowly he begun to feel so enraptured with his task, the task that she had set, that his all of his self-consciousness regarding having another person standing and watching him concentrating melted away. He became increasingly fixated on wanting to satisfy her.

After what felt like only a few seconds, though he knew it would have been eons in any other situation, he shrugged off his robes. Instinctually his hands moved upward, attempting to shield Aurora from the sight of him, but again she stopped this by clicking her tongue loudly.

“ _No_.” She charged firmly, now moving toward him from the door. “You _won’t_ hide yourself from me." 

With that, she raised her wand, but before he could even open his mouth to question what in the name of Merlin she was going to go to him Aurora had already answered:

"I won’t give you any more than you can handle…”

“And how do you know what I can handle?” Severus blurted out, finally able to string sentences together once more. He suddenly began to feel very wary again, he did not wish to have someone else attempt to push the boundaries of hurt he could not handle.

Sinistra smiled.

“You will tell me.”

And it was either the most bizarre retort he had ever taken, or the most cathartic he was not sure. But an odd sense of control found its way into his new founded submission. Perhaps it was a complete contradiction of terms, he was not sure, he had never experienced anything like this before, but having the known ability to get out of this situation whenever he wanted was all the reassurance he needed for it continue.

Aurora was patiently waiting for a signal, and when he finally gave it she took a breath and nodded. 

Instead of black ropes emanating in a violent, rapid manner from her wand (as they typically did with that sort of spell), they snaked up his body in a way that was almost temperate and comforting. Severus felt the rub of the material begin to bind his wrists behind his back, and then they moved up his back and around his sides, crisscrossing together around his upper body until he was no longer able to stand. He felt her still cold hands catch him from behind, where they pushed him down upon her desk. Severus rested there with his head laying against various piles of parchments and ink bottles and star charts.

The first sensation that came to him as she positioned herself behind his back was not at all what he expected. He had braced himself for kind of sudden explosion… an intense sting that would radiate through him and cause him to emanate highly embarrassing noises… but instead of that, he had felt a soft palm run up and down the length of his spine; Aurora caressed his body so tenderly that he had a hard time believing it was Aurora, and almost looked around to make sure that she wasn’t playing some excruciatingly humiliating prank on him.

But no. He trusted her. He really did. What a revelation. 

She had saved his life a mere few days ago. Relinquishing all thought of her own safety. There was no reason not to trust her now.

The tender and gentle stroking continued, he could feel her breathing heavily behind him, wrapped in her concentration of his body, taking it all in. Her skilled hands moved up to his bare shoulders and around the top of his arms. The barely-there contact her fingertips made with the topmost surface of Severus’s skin made him shudder. Electric sparks ran rampant down the length of his body, saturating all of his senses.

The transition between the caresses and the gradual clawing of his skin was so masterfully transitioned that he did not notice any difference at first. It wasn’t until he found himself hissing into the rick mahogany of the desk that Severus realised his skin was stinging.

And, oddly, it was not an unwelcome sensation… it felt almost the same, but far, _far_ more satisfying. Every tiny negative thought or ounce of inner pain he had been feeling over the course the past week seemed to radiate from his chest and out of the nerve endings of his epithelium, disappearing into the night. Every moan he could not manage to stifle just aided the cathartic process even more.

Aurora pressed the tip of her black wand gently against his goosebump-riddled skin and traced his body; delivering tiny shocks of what felt like a combination of pinpricks and static shocks. The intensity of the sensation began to build up so gradually yet so forcefully over the course of however long they had been here for (he had lost all concept of time by now), that Severus found himself in the middle of an inexorable shriek before he even registered that he had made the sound.

“I can’t -” he choked, as all of the insecurities came flooding back. “Stop it.”

He felt the wand retract and a sweaty palm come to rest upon his shoulder.

“Why?” came Aurora’s surprisingly concerned voice. “Does it hurt too much?”

“What if someone hears?” Severus snapped, attempting at every desperate opportunity to hide his rising embarrassment at himself.

“We’re in the highest tower, in a locked office in the middle of the night,” Sinistra explained gently, though she had already begun to loosen the ropes that had, up until now, felt like a source of security and safekeeping. “I doubt anyone is going hear you.”

Severus breathed a weighty sigh as the final knot was cut around his wrists. He buckled onto the desk with the sort of heaviness one would expect from an individual collapsing into their bed after being awake for two days straight.

“ _You_ heard…” he whispered as he tried to regain his physical and mental strength; his back was prickling with stinging sensations from the aftereffects from her work.

He felt the desk creak with the weight of another body and looked around to find, with a jolt of unexpected surprise, Aurora sitting above him, her hands around his wrists.

“Come to the couch,” she spoke softly. “There’s something else I need to do.”

Faced with the thought of going through that completely blissful yet utterly draining experience yet again, Severus shook his head.

“I can’t,” he said plainly. “I apologise that things have been cut short - but I’ve had enough of your merciless cruelty for one night.”

Aurora let out a short sniff of amusement. “Didn’t take you too long to recover back to yourself self, then. Believe me - it’s trying for me too. I don’t intend to do that again tonight.”

He allowed himself to fall onto the much more comfortable burgundy leather of her office couch. He watched as she began to rummage around in her cupboards, and wondered wildly what on earth kind of horrific implement she was about to try to unleash upon him this time, before she emerged holding a small pot of something.

“Don’t,” she said plainly as Severus began fiddling with the buttons on his robes again – feeling distinctly uncomfortable and vulnerable without the sanctity of cloth against skin once more. 

She held the edge of his robes between her fingers as she sat down next to him and shrugged them off ever so gently, just down to his waist.

Severus stared resolutely at the wall. He had no idea what on earth to expect, only he knew, somehow, that Aurora wouldn’t have made him experience anything he did not welcome. It was a rather idiotic thought, really, one which he slightly castigated himself for. It was not at all wise to put this much trust into human beings… even if he had not a single reason to distrust _this_ particular human being.

Still, his body tensed. A natural reaction to being so defenceless in a room with someone armed with a wand and a jar of a yet-unknown mysterious substance.

Then, the relief arrived.

A cooling substance began to infiltrate the various pressure points of pain and stinging all over his back. The lotion from her fingertips worked their way across his skin in such an easy, relieving method that Severus momentarily lost himself in it before self-consciousness wormed its infuriating way back into his head again.

“You have industrial-strength salve on standby in case of such activities, do you?” he muttered sardonically whilst willing the goosebumps not to show themselves to her.

“Oh, quite. One gets so many opportunities to thrash members of the public at a school in the middle of no-where, in a tower which no-one wishes to climb else they suffer a particularly potent asthma attack,” Sinistra drawled behind him. “This also works wonders on skin that has been dried from the bitterly cold air up here, you know. There…" 

She helped him pull the robes back up to his shoulders before spinning the cap back onto the jar of the salve. 

"That should take most of the stinging away. Though I have no doubt you probably have far more advanced methods for pain relief… could have let you do it yourself, I suppose.”

“No, you were good…” said Severus a little too quickly, he sounded like a fucking desperate puppy dog. He bit his lip hard in punishment for it.

“I mean – it was kind of you-” he explained. Turning to face her, he was most displeased to feel the same jolt in his stomach as he had done upon observing her dancing amongst the stars and planetary systems. She looked… very different tonight and he was not at all sure if he liked it. He wanted her to say something to enflame him, to make him remember that she was so very bloody intolerable and that he couldn’t bare to be in the same room as her.

But instead she was sitting opposite him, her dark black skin bathed in firelight and glittering with the sweat of her recent effort, looking utterly… he could barely bring himself to think it, it wouldn’t do.

“Did it help at least a little bit?” Aurora asked curiously, so close that Severus was able to feel her breath trickle down his neck.

He paused to consider her question.

Yes. Yes, it had.

At least for the brief moment in which such intense sensations had been delivered… sensations far more convoluted and penetrating than anything they had done in the past. All that mattered was doing what she had commanded of him, and of feeling the precise and intricate results of her will. There was a safety in it that was unmatched. 

There was no way in hell, however, that he was going to divulge _that_ much.

“It… was certainly a different way of going about things,” Severus answered. “How on earth did you discover that you were such a sadistic maniac, by the way? I’m very intrigued to know.”

Aurora laughed and leant back against the couch, she rested her boots upon the table before them and smiled up at the stone tower looming over them. “I wouldn’t attempt to psychoanalyze me, at least not tonight. I’d need a tonne more wine and a lot more time on my hands.”

“And what happened with Septima?“

A vexed sigh escaped her dark lips, and he was sure he was meant to feel its gravitas.

"I told you. Nothing happened.”

“Well, if you’re using me as a replacement doormat for her then I think it is my business also” he replied irritably.

“I do not ’ _replace_ ’ anybody,” Aurora barked indignantly, her body tensing up next to him. She slid a few inches away. “Septima and I didn't even do anything! Even if we did, I would be allowed to break casual flings off without it having anything to do with _you_ , you know... before you and I ended up together anyway.”

It was the first time she had ever said that. It made something, something aching, rise in his throat. Severus’s intense gaze penetrated her space so intently that he could have sworn that she had faintly shuddered at it.

“Together? When exactly have we been 'together’ and when did it start? Because I would _very_ much like to be kept up-to-date with the information only you seem to be privy to,” he enquired irreverently.

“I- that was a silly word to use, I didn’t mean - ” Aurora stammered, her eyes now looking everywhere but him. Try as he might, Severus could not put a stopper on something that felt remarkably like disappointment. But it couldn’t have been.

He was half-relieved, half-concerned, to see that she had now been rendered just as uncomfortable as he was: and it was clear that she had been, for the words that had often come so easily to her had run dry, and now Aurora Sinistra sat before him with her head in her hands, an exasperated sigh omitting from the cracks between her fingers.

“It’s… a lonesome place for a young… young _ish_ … witch. Living in this castle in the middle of fucking no where,” she finally breathed from her palms, half of her chocolate coloured eyes visible to him now. “You and I both knew what we were getting into; a means to an end. That was all. _Is_ all.” She corrected.

Severus considered her for a few slightly painful seconds.

“Then why,” he implored, “ _why_ did you kiss me? And if you say it was to play mind games with Dumbledore again I swear - ”

Aurora sat back upright to her full height, clearly no longer feeling as out of place as he was. She cocked her head slightly to the side in vaguely patronising manner.

“I think you’ll find,” she replied with a raised eyebrow. “That it was you who kissed me this time.”

Severus opened and shut his mouth several times as his mouth searched desperately for insults, or reasons, or evidence to the contrary.

“You – but you… you _told_ me to kiss you!”

“And you _did_.”

It was simple and indisputable. What was he to say? He really had not intended on staying here for as long as he did… did certainly not intend to walk in on her weaving such intricate magic, and almost definitely could never have gauged what followed in his wildest dreams – or nightmares – or both.

And yet, Septima. _Septima_ was gnawing at him. He _needed_ to know why Aurora had made up that entire story… especially so close to their incident in the forest, where she had indeed single-handedly saved him from melting into the muddy ground.

He pushed himself up from the couch and winced slightly as her marks began to pang in protest. Aurora was watching him intently as he did so, which made the longing to break into her thoughts even more harrowing for him. Severus did not need Legilimency to know that she would have been on Aurora’s mind… but he did need to find out _why_ , and the mere fact that Legilimency even vaguely crossed his mind disgusted him. 

Severus saw a line appear between the dark brows, and he already knew what she was assuming before she even said it.

“What are you doing?” Aurora queried warily, folding her arms as if unconsciously protecting herself from his gaze.

“Standing up, if you’d permit me.”

“Don’t play dumb with me. Dumb doesn’t work well on you.” She answered bitterly. It was as if someone had turned the cold back on again, after the brief heat of their bodies and sweat. “You’re using Legilimency.”

“I would _never_ do that to you,” Severus assured as plainly and as calmly as he could. “I’ve told you a _million_ times that I would never dream of doing that to you. What on earth is it going to take to stop you from accusing me of breaking into your head every two seconds?”

Aurora sighed and looked away, whether she was breaking eye contact because it was getting uncomfortable or whether she still distrusted him was anyone’s guess. He hoped against hope that it was the former.

“I need to learn how to become an Occlumens…” she whispered, seemingly more to herself but it didn’t stop an enormous wall of hurt from hitting him square in the chest.

“Then you don’t trust me.” Snape stated factually, hoping his voice did not shake as much as his hands were.

“Well, it’s not like that is an exclusive club with you as its only member” Sinistra retorted cattily.

“ _I trusted yo_ -” but he instantly cut himself off mid-sentence. Fuck, if there was a spell that could pluck words out of the air and shove them back into the mouths of the morons who uttered them, he would have been waving his wand at his face before the next breath.

And, backed into a corner so constrictive he could barely breathe, he stalked out of the room. The effect was marred slightly by being a hit with the wall of projected and swirling stars, still journeying their way around the room from her enchantments. Severus attempted to wave them away like irksome flies. He heard a door slam behind him before he could manage to get to the other one leading down the tower.

“What do you want me to say to you?!” Aurora demanded so loudly that he wouldn’t be surprised if Hagrid had heard her all the way from the Forbidden forest. “Why do you _think_ I ended everything with Septima? Is it too arduous for you to gauge _why_ I cut off a normal, functioning relationship with an actual emotionally secure person?”

Snape quickened his step. For some reason, when they had finally had gotten to the stage of her being on the brink of admitting something, he felt an agonising desire to escape. Best keep things how they were… anything else would be far too dangerous, and the guilt would probably never leave him.

“The Occlumency request was so that I could hide my _idiotic_ feelings for you from Dumbledore! Satisfactory answer?”

And Sinistra could very well have aimed an arrow and released it straight into the sinews of his back. It was a shot that could not have possibly missed. His hand gripped the side of the archway he had just almost escaped from.

Severus closed his eyes and wished he could have apparated the hell out of there. Better yet, not have had the idea to come up here in the first place, nor to cave in to her demands, nor to press her about Septima and Dumbledore… basically not to have acted like such a bumbling idiot.

“Shut-up,” he whispered.

“ _Excuse me_?”

“I said _shut-up_!” Severus shouted suddenly, something snapping loose in his brain. “This was never meant to get this far! You hated me. That was the way we had planned it.”

“Hated you?” Aurora laughed with a mad glint in her eye. “You’re an unbearable git who makes me want to rip my hair out and strangle you with it and I wish I’d never ended up in the same year and same house as you at school… never met you at all really… but I risked my _life_ trying to get you out of the Forbidden forest. I could have very well have been turned into a werewolf for all you care! We’ve been fucking each other for years. You have just allowed yourself to lose all of your control to me and you barely batted an eyelid. And you’re going to stand there and tell me that I _hate_ you?” she snorted contemptuously.

“You’re full of shit, Snape. Say what you really mean. That you’re not getting what you want from me anymore and you want out.”

“Do not put unsolicited words into my mouth when they are blatant lies,” Severus replied, his teeth were now bared and he was no longer able to contain anything within him. “You know very well that you hated me once.”

“A long time ago, yes.” Aurora nodded solemnly.

“What changed?”

She raised her eyebrow so high that it almost disappeared.

“I don’t have time for this,” she said, rolling her eyes into the awaiting skeptical brows. “I have a class to get ready for at midnight. Are you _going_ to teach me Occlumency, or was that an empty request?”

“Given the change of circumstances,” Severus answered, clearing his throat as he did so. “I highly doubt I would be the right person for the job.”

“So this is something unreciprocated?” Aurora probed – as if she had never heard such a blatant load of hogwash in her life, which made him all the more tongue-tied.

Severus averted his gaze to the floor. If only she knew how difficult this situation truly was… if he had been anyone else in the world it would have been so simple, so easy, to reach out to her. But unfortunately he was in this body and this mind… and there were so many barriers there he could almost see them occluding her from his vision.

“It’s – it’s not that – I mean I appreciate- I do feel… ” he spluttered to his feet before taking a bigger, more energising breath, which gave him time to get his words in order. “It’s too difficult. And I can assure you that you would never be happy with… me.”

Oh, he could ensure her that with the utmost sincerity.

He looked up and to found to his horror that Aurora still looked as confident as ever before. He wished the environment would cease to be so intoxicating. Though he was not quite sure whether it was the thousands of tiny little stars floating around their heads, the snow plundering around outside or the fact that, when Sinistra was not goading and annoying him to high heaven, his knees appeared to want to give out every time he looked at her.

“You don’t have the authority to tell me what will and won’t make me happy, Sev,” she replied smoothly. He allowed himself once again to be pulled toward her those last few inches, their lips hovered dangerously close together.

“There is so much you don’t know, Borealis. You’d have a field day. A field _century_.”

“Likewise, Gitface.”

And even though he was almost one hundred percent certain that whatever problems she harbored paled in comparison to his own, Severus could not help that feel it was a fair point. It was about her more than it was about him… he’d much rather everything be about her than about him…

Their lips brushed together so delicately he could well have been walking into one of the massless galaxies waltzing above his head. He clutched at the outer edges of her dark brown dreadlocks before cupping her jaw and drawing her into him just that little bit more.

Frosty pink and brown lips moved across one another, it was supremely easy when they almost precisely matched one another’s height. As always, she led him to her - opening her mouth just slightly enough to allow him access, to which he obliged. He had not much proficiency with this sort of thing to say the least… but he assumed that he out to reciprocate the way the very tip of her tongue danced upon his own, becoming deeper and more forceful in an almost painstaking way. It was only after a few brief seconds that he realised he had been staring at her face, mortified that her eyes were suddenly going to snap upon and she’d realise what an awful, disgusting mistake she had made.

But Aurora was apparently quite enjoying herself. Letting herself go and vanish into him in a fashion he greatly envied. When he finally felt safe enough to close his eyes, she had already broken the kiss.

It was a strange mixture of disappointment and relief. Something had changed in the air and suddenly it was the both of them fighting to keep something from Dumbledore, as opposed to one another.

He suddenly noticed that he was breathing a lot faster than she was and desperately tried to divert attention from it.

“I… will leave you to your lesson preparations,” he said, giving a slight and idiotic awkward bow that he once again brutally chastised himself for.

Aurora nodded.

“You will teach me?” she pressed. “There is something about our feelings for each other that Dumbledore is trying to squash, I know it. He knew it before we knew it.”

Severus’s belly gave a very unhappy lurch. _Of course he would try to prevent this sort of thing, it only made sense. Dumbledore fears my loyalty will waver if I ever found someone senseless enough to want to invest any sort of time to me._

And, truth be told, it wasn’t just Dumbledore that made him feel this was a bad idea overall.

But he didn’t get into it. He nodded in return.

“Yes,” he answered. “I honestly cannot say how effective it will be, given the… given this. But we can certainly try.”

_I will certainly need to try myself…_

Aurora motioned him out of the archway. “Until then, then.”

“Until then.”

With the usual façade between them now completely obliterated, there was an odd tenseness never felt before. He didn’t know quite how to bid her goodnight. Usually he would merely turn on his heel, swish his cloak in the opposite direction and stalk off muttering very rude obscenities – but in this case, he highly doubted the same pattern would be appropriate.

He settled for everything but the obscene muttering, and left down the endless spiral staircase wholly aware of the sleepless night and intrusive thoughts ahead of him.


	18. Obliviated

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aurora receives a fairly substantial bump on the head. Quirinus becomes slightly more paranoid.

The post-Christmas weather may have begun to warm up the air just a tad, but the temperature within the walls of the staff room retained its chilly atmosphere.

Severus and Aurora hadn't had much of opportunity to discuss the nuances of their recently altered association, mainly due to the fact that they hadn't had any opportunity to be alone whatsoever. Preparations for the NEWT's had gotten into full swing - and with Astronomy practical lessons on top of that every weekday at midnight, Aurora certainly was not in the mood to squeeze in relationship talks with Severus between classes, research, sleeping and occasionally shoving food into her mouth. She doubted Severus would be remotely interested in talking anyway – even if he did have all the free time in the world.

It had been a particularly dull afternoon of moon phases and their various effects on potions with the fourth-years. Aurora trenched back up her staircase and into her office after class with her belly rumbling and eyes heavy, only to quietly moan in frustration at the sight of an empty cupboard. Damn. She had cleared out the entire office of foodstuffs in her week long solitude from her colleagues. She puffed out an exasperated sigh into her cheeks and wondered if she could manage to hold off until breakfast…

When her stomach gave a deep, profound roar in objection to the very thought – she made her way down to the Great Hall for dinner.

Most of the staff were already halfway through their evening meals when she quietly slipped through the backdoor near the teacher's head table, the Great Hall was ablaze with chattering and the scraping of knives and forks across metal plates and the candles twinkled warmly over their heads… it was very easy for Aurora to sidestep her way to an empty chair, plonk herself down and quickly scoff down her dinner.

"Evenin', Professer!" came the joyful and refreshingly innocent booming voice of Hagrid, two empty seats down from her. Upon glancing to her left at him and smiling a greeting he had picked up his entire dinner, and glass of pumpkin juice (or at least she hoped it was pumpkin juice… knowing Hagrid…), and clumped toward her, the two empty chairs in his way were promptly shoved to the side with such force that one almost toppled over. The whole ordeal created such a noisy upheaval that several of the staff looked up… Aurora caught the eye of Septima – who had quickly looked away and begun talking to Charity. Huh… so her and Charity were on speaking terms again, good to see that _someone_ was happy in this godforsaken castle…

Three spaces down from Septima and Charity's blissful union, however, Severus appeared to have been momentarily struck deaf. His eyes were completely fixated on something far beyond were Hagrid and she now sat.

"Haven' seen yeh around for a good few days," Hagrid pressed curiously and gently next to her. "Everything al'righ? Honestly, sometimes I don't know how yeh do it – walking up and down those stairs all day 'n night. I would've given up after a week and hosted all my practicals outside! Got some muscles in those legs, I bet!"

Aurora had only caught about a quarter of what he said. She was far too busy frowning at Severus in quiet intrigue.

"Mmm…" she sounded in vague agreement at Hagrid's nonsensical gibberish. She shoved something which apparently tasted like cabbage into her mouth as she followed Severus's brutal gaze along the table, she turned her head and spent a good few moments trying to decipher what had gotten him so completely absorbed. There was Pomona chatting away to Poppy… nothing new… Filius was chomping down on a baked potato, which he promptly spat down and began to fan his mouth as the steam rose from his plate… mildly amusing, she supposed, but nothing noteworthy… and next to him there was Quirinus… who looked deathly pale and was shaking dramatically, his body rocking silently and his lips moving quietly together in quick succession…

So that was it.

And now Sinistra had become completely absorbed in the extremely odd behaviour of her colleague. Whether Hagrid had continued chattering away to her or not she did not know; all she knew was Quirinus had not touched a bite of his food and his eyes were darting around the hall like a man possessed. He looked positively ill with worry.

"Sickle for yer thoughts?"

Aurora snapped back into reality and turned to face Hagrid with an apologetic smile.

"I'm sorry, Hagrid," she replied. "Sorry. A lot of things on my mind."

"Don't blame yeh," Hagrid replied kindly, he patted her back comfortingly which rather unnerved her – to realise that she hadn't actually been touched by another human being for days. "Rough time of year ain't it. If there's anythin' I can do…"

"Thank you, my friend" Aurora said with great warmth coming from her – if she said so herself. "Your company is all I need. And perhaps a drink or two on Friday."

Hagrid gave a satisfied laugh through his own glass of drink. "Ah I'd love to, love to! Name yer drink, I'll get it in."

Sinistra scoffed the rest of her food down faster than she had ever remembered and flicked her eyes back toward Severus, who, she was startled to find, was no longer at the table. His plate had been cleared and his chair now sat rather empty.

And Quirrell was still there – rocking and muttering.

"Oh, I don't know…" Aurora answered Hagrid vaguely. "Surprise me. I love surprises."

The rest of a rather unwanted dessert was spent trying not to offend Hagrid by appearing ignorant of his wonderfully comforting conversation and keeping a close eye on Quirinus. Several times Aurora thought to sidle over to one of the others to alert them to his extremely odd behaviour, but she was still exasperated and riled from everyone's juvenile behaviour that she could barely muster up the energy to wave at them – let alone talk.

When Quirrell finally arose from the table and stumbled out of the side door, she promptly began saying her goodnights to Hagrid, returned Septima's glare from across the high table because she was feeling particularly vicious toward her and everyone who wasn't Rubeus Hagrid tonight, and exited in the same direction.

Thankfully, the corridor Quirrell had entered ran only in one direction for a good while. The bad thing was that it made Aurora's tailing of him rather conspicuous. Several times she had to slow her steps to avoid being detected by him, and once he had physically turned, clearly altered by something, causing the Astronomy professor to press herself against the wall behind a wooden beam – wondering what the fucking hell she was doing and feeling quite the fool.

Still, there was something in the way he muttered and whimpered through the corridor that told her to follow, and to be careful not to be found doing so…

Eventually, a door slammed halfway up a flight of stairs. Aurora carefully took a peek around the stone wall to find an empty staircase, followed by the bone-chilling noise of a man screaming and crying. Hairs standing very much on end, she crept up the stairs, wand at the ready, and pressed her ear closer to the door.

" _I am not strong enough. I am too weak!"_

" _Fool! We are so close! Are you foolish enough to believe that I,_ _ **I**_ _, am not able to acquire the information required to subdue a lowly three-headed beast?!"_

" _No, no… I…"_

" _You are merely a vessel! A means to an end! A poor excuse for one, I grant you, but you will get me what I desire – because I will MAKE you!"_

Aurora's breathing became sharp and wild from the other side of the door. She had never heard such a voice in her life… its high-pitched screeching burrowed its way through her eardrums and pierced her skull with such precision it almost felt like it _was_ coming from inside her own head. She barely had the capacity to question who it was Quirrell was talking to, or what they wanted to acquire so badly.

" _Yes… yes of course, my -"_

" _You are wasting time with your futile blubbering, Quirrell. Tomorrow at this time we will have all the information we need to get rid of the beast belonging to that oaf of gamekeeper and it shall be done."_

The Philosopher's Stone… he wanted the Stone… Aurora's breathing had become so untameable that she subconsciously held her hand over her mouth to stop Quirrell from noticing it.

She had to leave. She had to get to someone. She had no expertise to deal with something like this… she was a fucking academic, a physicist, fantastically intelligent and shrewd - utterly mediocre with charms. She was certainly not some foolhardy wand-wielding Auror busting down doors and swinging in on ropes.

Aurora turned to run in the same direction they had been headed, she knew she was able to get to Minerva if she continued climbing these stairs.

" _Yes, my Lord…"_ came more wailing from behind the door she was about to leave behind. Sinistra froze mid-step, her blood slowly, painfully freezing up from within her veins.

It couldn't. That couldn't be who he was talking to. Surely… surely not. You-Know-Who had been long gone, long dead, long ago. There was a boy here with a lightning scar on his head which proved all of this.

Severus. She needed to get to Severus. She wanted to give him all of this information and have nothing more to do with it and go back to worrying about NEWT's and Septima's attitude.

" _Before we retire, Quirrell…"_ the icy voice radiated through the room and inside her skull, _"we might want to take care of the little spy outside of this room, who is acting a little too big for her boots…"_

The door swung open as Aurora turned and leapt down the stairs, several curses skimmed over the top of her head and hit the opposing wall as she raised her wand behind her back and shot a feeble non-verbal curse back toward the approaching Quirrell. She turned and sprinted back the way they had come, all the while shooting panicked glances back behind her and promptly dodging every single bolt of green and red being shot at her back.

" _Get her! Don't let her escape!"_

Aurora jumped about five feet in the air as a curse flew toward her boots; she fell against the wall as she stumbled to steady herself and toppled through a door.

" _Stupefy!"_ she cried as the approaching figure filled the doorway behind her.

" _Protego!"  
_

The spell rebounded, but Sinistra was quick. She ducked behind a desk where it exploded around her. She swung her wand above her head and blindly sent curse after curse firing over her new-founded shield; a sharp cry of pain told her that she had hit her mark.

" _Idiot! Let me deal with her."_

"Master!" Quirrell cried out from the floor of the abandoned room. "Please!"

Stuck behind the desk and the wall, Aurora was utterly trapped. Her eyes darted around the room wildly looking for any means of escape but none came. She closed her eyes and centred her panic… trying desperately to calm herself so that her brain could actually start to work again. With one long, deep, breath she leapt up from her position swung her wand over her head.

"STUPEFY!"

It was evident that he… they… them… had not expected her to continue fighting. Quirrell was thrown off balance. For a few sweet split seconds Aurora thought that she had disabled him, but the sweetness of success was suddenly overpowered by terror as he flicked his wand – as if he were a puppet being contorted by some otherworldly force – and sent her curse ricocheting to and fro all around them.

"Quirinus!" she started, but he had risen his wand toward her once more. She was convinced that he was about to finish her off for good before some ten-tonne, invisible force slammed against her entire body: lifting her cleanly off the ground and flying her through the air toward the ceiling. She tried desperately to lift her wand to use any counter-curse that came to mind but her hands remained glued to her sides – as if bound by invisible restraints. Aurora's body jolted and lurched through her futile attempts to free herself from the magical bondage… but the force was so heavy that it began to contract against her body, she felt as if her very bones were crippling before her and gave a great cry of pain.

" _Kill her. Get rid of the evidence."_

Quirinus's face appeared contorted with just as much pain and anguish as her own at this command.

"I can't…" he whimpered through a waterfall of tears, his wand shaking in front of his stark white face. "Master, please."

" _YOU WILL KILL THIS FEEBLE EXCUSE FOR A SPY, OR YOU WILL SUFFER THE CONSEQUENCES!"_

Floating above the tormented Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher in her invisible prison, Sinistra was mustering up all of her very last reserves of energy to at least angle her wand toward him. If it could just tilt that extra millimetre… Quirinus and the Voice were far too preoccupied to notice that she had closed her eyes, that her breathing had slowed, her nerves had calmed. She had almost become catatonic in her meditative state. She felt her wand rise ever so faintly. A few more millimetres and it would be enough – though whether she could harness enough inner energy to focus on a curse was another matter.

When her wand felt suitably elevated - and using the time graciously bestowed to her by Quirrell struggling with himself - Aurora's hand, which was already pounding in her magical vice, clenched as tight as she could around the handle of her wand. She willed everything to go black… blank and still…

" _Do it…"_

Magic throbbed through her constricted veins right up to her fingertips. Whether Quirrell had finally relented and was sending a killing curse straight toward her she did not know, all she knew was that there was a great heat radiating from her hand, a scream and an explosion. All of a sudden the magical prison gave way and vanished beneath Aurora's feet – she dropped straight to the ground like a stone.

" _Expelliarmus!"_ Quirrell cried from the floor, it seemed her curse had knocked him, or both of them, straight off his feet where he had crumbled into the corner. Aurora's wand was suddenly torn straight from her hand, where it hit the opposing wall next to him.

" _Get up! Get up!"_

Aurora blindly fumbled around behind her, looking for anything to shield herself with, or throw at his slimly little face, either way. As if consumed by the same force that had bound her in the air, Quirrell joltingly raised his wand at her.

" _Kill her, or I will be done with you and take her body instead!"_ the voice echoed within the chamber.

Quirinus was momentarily paralysed, his head was shaking viciously and tears were running down his cheeks.

"I can't…" he whispered.

His wand had remained unused for a split-second too long. Aurora saw her only opportunity and took it with as much strength as she could manage; she threw herself at Quirinus and grappled with him, her hands clenched around his wand as she twisted it out of his hand with all of her might. The voice behind him began screeching and roaring in protest as it began to will Quirrell's body to writhe around… but it was apparent it was far too weak of a physical force to actually do any damage. When she failed to acquire the wand from his vice-like grip Sinistra decided on a new tactic - and, forgoing any thought of magic or curses or anything mystical whatsoever, she punched him square in the face.

Clearly no one had been expected it. Quirrell toppled over and had to steady himself on a desk to prevent him from smacking the floor. Aurora took this as her one and only chance to escape the room. She leapt over the hunched over Quirrell and ran for it, completely wandless and on the verge of death she was sure of it.

" _KILL HER NOW!"_

And just as she was about to throw open the door to the sanctuary of the open corridors and castle, she heard a cry behind her… only it was not the words of the killing curse - but something else entirely.

" _OBLIVIATE!"_

The screams of protests and noise all vanished around her as the charm wrapped itself around her. Aurora's vision faded in and out, it was as almost as if she were drowning in the haze. All coherent thought leaked from her synapses and out into the open air as she stumbled forward; her ankles gave way and she fell hard against the sharp edge of the door, but was unconscious well before she could have felt it hit her temple, and before she could feel her body slide toward the floor where it crumped in a head for the last time that night.

The world was black, and she might as well never have been in the same room as He Who Must Not Be Named at all, nor would she ever know that she had managed to defend herself against him for a considerably longer time than most would have managed…

* * *

The screams and shattering against his skull was almost unbearable. Quirinus wrapped his hands around his head and thrashed around in agony as the Dark Lord unleashed the most excruciating agony upon every nerve in his body.

" _You weak-minded, pathetic, pitiable little worm!"_ the mutation ofLord Voldemort hissed upon the back of Quirinus's skull. " _Couldn't even manage a simple killing curse on someone who could have single-handedly foiled our entire plan! You are an embarrassment. A failure."_

The words kept ringing in his ears and the pain kept burrowing into his muscles and tendons. Through pained tears Quirinus gazed upon the unconscious Astronomy mistress currently curled up on the floor… breathing… but how damaged she was remained to be seen. He hoped beyond all hope that his Memory Charm had been strong enough to wipe the evening's occurrences clean from her mind, or else he would be a dead man, he knew it.

" _At least this makes it easier for you kill her now!"_ Voldemort screeched.

Quirinus held a hand over his mouth to stop himself weeping. The woman before them had once been a friend. They had known each other years, and had started working as Professors at almost the same time. Spending most the year with his colleagues meant that many conversations had been shared between them… many laughs and moments that he had treasured.

And now he was here. His wand trained on her, her own wand abandoned to the side of the room like some worthless branch, about to punish her, perhaps murder her, for simply checking up on him.

"My Lord, please…" he implored. "If someone finds her… how will we dispose of her body? Surely it would be… be best to let the Memory Charm take its full effect?"

No torturous pain followed, nor any sound. Quirinus wondered madly whether the Dark Lord was planning his ultimate demise for deliberately disobeying his orders…

" _You are saying this to save her."_ eventually came a muted sound. " _If you cannot do away with a mere colleague then what will be like when faced with Harry Potter, I wonder!"_

"My Lord, no!" Quirrell objected loudly. "Harry Potter! He – he his different! I have no qualms with killing the meddlesome boy! But… I simply cannot drag her body around the castle just after dinner! And someone might have noticed all of the commotion already and will be rushing to investigate! There would be a thorough investigation, possibly involving the Auror Office… Would it not b-be best if we simply… left?"

He winced, readying himself for the blow – by this stage it would have come as blessed relief.

But Voldemort did not do or say anything. After a minute of pure silence, Quirrell took a deep breath.

"… My Lord?"

" _If this Memory Charm does not work, servant - you will be the only one to bare ultimate responsibility."_

Quirinus gulped.

"O-of course, Master…"

Looking down at Sinistra's broken and bloodied body, he hoped someone would have heard enough to arrive here soon. She looked on the verge of death as it was and then they would have a real problem on their hands…

"Could we not bring her somewhere where she might be found?" he implored his master as he probed her lifeless form with the tip of his boot.

 _Severus…_ Quirrell thought all of a sudden with a jolt. _Severus will know who did this. And for it to be Aurora…_ he was of the impression that his two associates had formed some kind of attachment over the years – he was sure of it. You couldn't live with all of these people and not cotton on to something like that.

_If it won't be the Dark Lord who will be the cause of my ultimate demise, it will be surely be Severus Snape when he finds out… or certainly Aurora Sinistra if she hasn't managed to become entirely Obliviated…_

" _Severus?"_ said the Dark Lord, as if Quirrell had just mused about this entire ordeal out loud.

"Master?"

" _Severus and this interfering… thing. You believe they are more than mere colleagues."_

"I am not sure of it, my Lord, I honestly -"

" _It is of no consequence for now,"_ assured Voldemort - though there was something in the way he answered which suggested otherwise.

" _Come. Let us go. Leave the girl here. If she dies, then you would have accomplished what you were MEANT to in the first place!"_

"Yes, my Lord. You are right, of course."

He reached up and tugged his turban tight around his head. To ensure, more than anything, that somehow the flimsy piece of material would prevent the abomination attached to the back of his head from noticing what he was doing, despite knowing how futile this was. Quirrell strode from the room, passing Sinistra's body as he did so; noticing just how close her hand was to the door's exit – he bent down for such a split second that barely even he noticed himself doing it. He clasped his clammy, sweaty hand around Aurora's wrist and pulled her ever-so-slightly out into the corridor.

Someone would find her… surely…

It appeared that the Dark Lord no longer had any had for torture left in him tonight, for Quirrell was allowed to pass unharmed into the corridor, taking one last look behind him at the solitary arm lying upon the floor of the hall, hoping to Merlin someone would find her… hoping to hell that it wouldn't be too late – that all of their plans would finally be unravelled and it would be the end of him.

And… somewhere deep down in his old self… he hoped above everything else that she would wake up, safe in the hospital wing but with all memory of tonight erased, and go about living a life that he certainly would no longer have.


	19. Visiting Hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which 'Severus' is a language unto itself...

_The world was black, cold…_

She couldn't remember if she'd lived in this blind cosmic vastness her entire life or not. Because she couldn't remember a time before this.

" – found – no-one – took - "

A babble of noise surrounded the black universe in which she found herself in, there were words she could recall, but how and why she could recall them was beyond her. Slowly, after what seemed like an eternity, the words strung themselves tighter together… though, when she finally would awake fully, she would not remember them. Just as she would not remember anything from what had happened to her prior to falling into this hole.

"I've done all I can, Dumbledore. She needs to go to the hospital. The St. Mungo's staff - "

"Yes, of course Poppy…"

The words were mere noise - utterly indistinguishable and incomprehensible. Someone might as well have been babbling nonsense into her ears, which is what she assumed was happening. Why couldn't she move? Why weren't they trying to wake her?!

"Who found her?"

"Septima and Charity. Albus, do you think it's safe to move her?"

"It doesn't appear as if she's been cursed... though I won't be completely convinced until… ah, Severus…"

And it was as if the person speaking had suddenly changed languages midsentence, to one that she could understand, just that one single word... Severus.

Severus.

_Severus._

It was the only word that infiltrated her devastated synapses. Aurora's eyes momentarily flickered, but this was apparently so unnoticeable that no-one made a sound; she needed Severus… it was the only thing that made sense – it had to be important.

Hurried footsteps echoed around her brain.

"What happened?"

* * *

 

"She was found like this," came a woman's voice. "Collapsed, outside a disused classroom. Albus is of the impression she has been badly Obliviated…"

"However, I deemed it best if you made a thorough assessment before we move Aurora to St. Mungo's for hopeful recovery," a voice of the same older man Aurora had heard prior.

She was screaming at him in her head, willing Severus into her mind for once, if only because he was the only thing she was recognising. She may as well have been a blob in the void of space were it not for Severus being the only thing that was connecting her to reality… but Aurora was nothing more than a prisoner of her self, in her shell of a body. More and more the reality that she may never again be able to wrench open her eyes, or move her muscles or even know where she lived and what she did with her life, began to sink into her veins.

The last thing she remembered because losing all consciousness altogether was the feeling of an ice-cold hand on her forehead and her eyelids, and as if that very same hand had switched off a blaring, blinding light - all was calm and still…

* * *

 

He had been dreading the moment ever since he had been called to the hospital wing. He had walked in with something teetering on the end of chest… and when he saw who it was, that something had plummeted straight into his belly. But Dumbledore was there, not to mention a few of the others – Severus willed himself with all his might to remain calm, to plaster an expressionless face over his features.

"What happened?" he asked as evenly as he could.

"She was found like this," Minerva explained, seated next to the unconscious Sinistra, who, were it not for the various bruises over her body, could have very well been in a deep sleep. "Collapsed, outside a disused classroom. Albus is of the impression she has been badly Obliviated…"

"However, I deemed it best if you made a thorough assessment before we move Aurora to St. Mungo's for hopeful recovery," said Dumbledore from the end of her bed.

Severus swallowed hard, trying not to look at her face. Her reached out with one hand and placed his fingers on her temples, with the other hand he took out his wand.

The other teachers present watched on in respectful silence as his wand traced her body, his eyes closed tight, letting the lights behind his eyelids alert him to the cause…

And he felt his wand being drawn up toward Aurora's forehead, where both it and the lights came to rest.

Her brain. It certainly been addled with, and he was certain Albus was correct in his assertion.

"Almost certainly Obliviated…" Severus finally answered, trying desperately not to let his throat catch.

His only hope was that whoever did it had done a clean job. That she wouldn't be left with permanent, long-term and short-term memory loss… all her work, all her research would be long forgotten… her whole life…

Severus bit his lip hard and pocketed his wand, anger bubbling up inside him, overflowing from his belly into his bloodstream.

"Severus?" – ah, but of course the blasted old man would have been onto him…

"It will be safe to move her to St. Mungo's. The bruises and cuts are merely superficial – looks like she put up a struggle. I suggest you do it quickly to salvage whatever we have left of Aurora's memories." said Severus, turning to make his exit.

"And where are you going?" Minerva queried behind his back.

Severus didn't turn back, but merely glared at the door.

"I have something else to attend to," he answered simply.

* * *

 

It was a testament to his usual demeanour that not a single one of the students noticed any specific change in Severus's disposition as he rushed down the corridor, his riled, hurried steps ringing across the stone walls, scattering one or two Ravenclaws as far away from him as they could possibly manage.

He thanked his lucky stars (knowing fully well that such a term would have infuriated Borealis) that Quirrell was sitting at his desk when he swung open the door – he didn't fancy prolonging his desire to wring his filthy little neck.

He had pinned Quirrell against the wall before the man could utter a single sound of protest.

"I -!" Quirrell spluttered and gagged as Severus maintained a vice-like grip upon his collar.

"You did it," Severus spat through his yellowed and clenched teeth. "I _know_ you did it!"

"I- don't-" Quirrell continued to cough, "did… did – what?"

The tip of the black wand that had previously gently traced Aurora's body now shoved itself right into crevice of Quirinus's throat.

" _If anything happens to her permanently, you are a dead man_ – do you hear me?" Severus's senses were now quite beyond his control, he mentally grasped at it… trying to centre himself… but all his unstoppable fury was telling him to kill the other man. Right here and now. "I don't care if there is no proof. I don't care if I get sent down to Azkaban for it! You are a _dead man_."

Never mind that there would be absolutely no proof, that Quirrell might talk to the others about Severus's own sanity, that if he did completely snap then a life-sentence in Azkaban following his mother would be on his hands – his mind was so far gone that he felt positively free with madness, like the shackles had been unlocked. The only feeling that was even remotely similar and liberating was when he had knelt for Aurora…

Quirrell looked positively terrified for his life, which he really could not be blamed for when faced with a crazed, shaking, unhinged looking man who looked just on the verge of a final breakdown.

"Sev – er – I didn't – unghh"

The wand burrowed further toward his pounding artery. The black eyes burrowed into his eyes.

Apparently Quirrell knew what he was trying to do, for he immediately averted his eye gaze, but as he did so, Severus caught sight of purpled, dark skin near his eye. It looked faded, but in very odd patches… as if he had tried to hastily scrub it off with a potion or charm and had done a piss-poor job in doing so.

"Managed to thump you before you desecrated her memory, did she?" Severus sneered with a triumphant glint in his eye. "That's a start at least."

Quirrell said nothing, not a muscle moved in his features nor his body, but his eyes remained firmly at the door behind them… he did not even register the threatening finger less than an inch from his face.

"If I get a _shred_ of evidence, a _whisper_ of a rumour, that you had anything to do with this…" he whispered in his most quiet, threatening voice. He viciously shoved the eerily silent Quirrell away form him so forcefully that the younger Professor stumbled and tripped, ending up bracing one of the walls to prevent him from falling completely.

Severus wiped the corner of his mouth with his sleeve to erase the evidence of his spitting fury and straightened up his cloak.

"I wouldn’t tempt someone who has nothing to lose," he murmured viciously to the trembling man underneath his breath as he backed away, closing the door gently and quietly behind him.

* * *

 

Muffled sounds and various, greyscale shapes danced in front of her eyes. Aurora must have been staring at the high ceiling forever… she felt as if her head was caught in a vice, unable to move an inch as all around her she heard vague, subdued voices and the hurrying of footsteps…

She might have been there for days, hours, weeks, she had no idea. It was bright and sunny on the day she was finally able to turn her head to look out of the window with great, painful effort, shutting her eyes almost immediately upon feeling the sting of the light on the nerves of her corneas.

Almost immediately as it happened, as if someone had shut off a switch, the light was completely blocked. Aurora breathed an inner sigh of relief as the pain eventually subsided.

"I've told these imbeciles multiple times to keep the curtains shut! But clearly I'm not communicating primitively enough for them…"

The contemptuous muttering was so soothingly familiar that Aurora ventured to open her eyes again. The vague black object next to her slowly began to focus into the form of a very displeased looking wizard.

Severus Snape looked downward and met her rapidly blinking eyes. He sniffed a bemused wisp of air upon seeing her awake.

"Ah, Borealis. Glad you could finally join the world of the living."

Aurora continued to gape at him, comprehension coming back to her word by word. Or at least syllable by syllable. Severus smirked and looked back down at his reading material.

"Not often I am given the gift of silence with you in the same room," he said as his eyes flicked back and forth across the page. "A welcomed change – but I think it's time you rolled out of bed and got on with your job, don't you?"

Aurora opened her mouth, which felt as if someone had sandpapered everything from her lips to her tonsils, and tried to cough a reply. Immediately her grateful lips were met with the rim of a water glass that he had presented to her, which she gulped down like a madwoman. 

"What happened?" she finally choked as she handed the bronze goblet back to Severus, who took it back and placed it upon the bedside table.

"We thought that perhaps you would give us some insight to that," he replied. "Though I did think it was a longshot. Do you know where you are at this moment?"

Aurora sluggishly observed her current surroundings, the light streaming out of the door caused her to shut her eyes again.

"It hurts to look…" she mumbled, wincing. His footsteps radiated toward the door, she hear a slam and an irritable sigh. 

"Sometimes I am of the impression that St. Mungo's rounded people up in the middle of a street and slapped them with Healer badges," he bit, moving back to his seating position. "You are experiencing photophobia. It is a common side-effect of -"

"I’m in St. Mungo's?" Aurora queried, latching onto the first bit of information he had given her. "As a _patient_?"

"Oh, of course not. You know how the Healing profession is screaming out for theoretical astrophysicists to join their ranks."

"Ever the comedian, I see."

Severus nodded a mocking thanks.

"So why am I stuck here, then? The catalyst of these side-effects…?" she pressed, giving up on physical exertion completely and collapsed back into the starchy bed sheets.

He paused for a while, as if musing over every possible way he could answer her. Eventually, Severus bit his tongue and said, "what is the last thing you remember? Even vaguely recall?"

Suddenly her brain was thrown into overdrive as she struggled to recall a single memory, a vision, an object she had seen before she woken up here. Everything was black and nothing. The mere feeling of such a void in her life made her entire body shake with distress.

"Try not to focus on any specific..." Severus interjected, obviously sensing the uneasiness.

And so Aurora tried again, closing her eyes to block out the alien environment that surrounded her now. This time, the feelings began morphing into shapes, images and situations.

"My tower…" she whispered.

"What?"

"I was sitting in my office," Aurora explained as the images kept on coming. Severus tutted.

"Well that's absolutely something we can narrow down and pinpoint -"

"And you were tied in black ropes…"

She trailed off as the rather incongruous vision of him encircled and restrained by long, ebony threads and lying upon her desk, covered in red welts and cuts, suddenly flashed before her.

Snape and Sinistra caught each others' eye and promptly looked away in opposite directions. She shifted in her bed.

"That _did_ happen, didn't it?" she whispered clumsily after a few excruciatingly long awkward moments of silence.

Severus, still staring resolutely at a painting of a mediwizard pouring some kind of disgusting looking substance into the mouth of a wailing amputee, cleared his throat, his lips even thinner than usual and his cheeks with rather more colour…

"I can assure you it did. I couldn't sit down without flinching for days." 

He mumbled so inaudibly that she barely registered that he was speaking. Aurora couldn't stop one corner of her lip from curling.

It was a very odd sight… more a feeling than anything… but despite Severus's initial unease, from that point onward his demeanour seemed to shift, as if someone had warmed up a bitterly cold chamber. That was until one of the Healers entered the room to perform observations and he almost blasted them out of the door with condemnations of her care. 

"Are you actually here to help me remember something, or are you just making it your mission to alienate me from the entire St. Mungo's morning shift staff?!" Aurora argued as the Healer stormed out in a huff, muttering something about ‘interfering family members’. She felt extremely incensed at his sudden desire to shower her with an unwarranted protective disposition. Clearly Snape’s idea of being protective was more like lining suspects up for execution. 

Severus continued to glare at the vacated and closed door for a few more moments, as if making sure that anyone who came back through it would be instantaneously recapped of his threats to report them for incompetence. Eventually he rested back against the chair and irritably flicked a piece of black hair out of his eye line. 

"It’s obvious you have been Obliviated -"

"Oh, you don’t say? Wouldn't have caught on to that, what with this gaping black hole in my head that appears to have sucked all my memories into it."

She was met with the most spectacular glare – to which she, of course, returned.

"… astronomy metaphors? Really?" he said with a well-trained raised eyebrow. "You didn't allow me to finish my sentence, though why break the habit of a lifetime? I was _going_ to say that you've been Obliviated rather poorly. Instead of taking out a couple of selective memories your attacker appears to have done a slapdash rush job. They've completely erased everything from past week or so. Though, thankfully, there appears to be no permanent damage to your thoughts or memories… but time will tell."

Aurora shook her head where she lay, in sheer disbelief.

"But why on earth would anyone want to Obliviate _me_?" she implored with much waving of hand. "It doesn't make sense. What do I know about anything that needs to be kept top secret? That's _your_ sort of business, not mine."

Theirs eyes lingered on one another, knowing that the other was thinking the exact same thing but neither wanting to admit it.

"I mean," Aurora continued on after it was clear that Severus was waiting for it. "I can't possibly think of any incident that would have…" she sighed heavily, frustration clawing at her insides yet again. 

"… but what ground do I have to stand on?" she asked pitifully "a whole week of my life has been taken from me. Who knows what I did or what I saw or who I saw doing what? I certainly don't."

"That's just it, Borealis," Severus said, in a surprising gentle and placating tone. "You don't know. No-one knows. But a memory charm is not the sort of thing that one can accomplish by mere accident… someone knew what they were doing and that someone was in the castle."

"Any hunches?"

"I may have." Severus murmured darkly, folding his arms across his chest.

Sinistra waited patiently, then impatiently, for a name.

"… _and_?" she prompted. "I would like to do some investigating if it's all the same to you!"

"And nothing," Severus countered. "It won't do to have you storming through the castle doors with murder on your mind... not when we have little to zero evidence of who the perpetrator is. I will monitor the situation myself."

Anger begun bubbling up inside Aurora's belly like one of his infernal potions on the boil.

"Excuse me!" she sat herself back up in the bed and turned her torso in order to face him properly. "Some nutcase is running around the castle trying to kill me and you're not going to tell me who you think it is because I you think might be a tad _miffed_? Well, I'm sorry if I don't want to be inviting someone who purposely addled my brains - who could have turned me into the equivalent of a jabbering pile of squashed tomatoes - to tea and biscuits!"

"This is why I can't tell you!" Severus twisted in his chair and leant forward so that she could see every furious feature in his face. "You can't control yourself. You burst into rooms as if you're a battalion of soldiers, wielding axes around and threatening death to all who cross you, it's not _helpful_!"

" _I am a battalion!_ " Sinistra responded with such red hot fury and self-possession that Snape was momentarily stunned. He withdrew, blinking inanely... "And I'll get to the bottom of this, with or without your help, so the only question is how much time are going to let me waste?"

"Do it your bloody self then, because I can't!" Severus's eyes were glittering in a maddening way now, he seemed right on the verge of incomprehension, that very fine line between sanity and and madness. "I can't –you can't get involved in any of – I couldn't bear…"

He viciously scraped the bottom of his chair against the wooden floorboards and stalked away to the closed curtains of the window, vaguely clawing at them as if not knowing what to do with himself.

Aurora watched his back with a concerned frown... a softer one than what she was used to giving him. Clearly there was something else going on in there, something he would likely never divulge to her. She opened and closed her mouth a few times as she pondered on the right thing to say, to will herself back to calmness...

"And is there nothing you can do to bring my memory back?" she asked, not sure if she wanted to know the answer. 

Severus slowly straightened up where he stood, he turned slowly and shook his head – though was seemingly relieved that they finally had something to talk about.

"Lost memories can sometimes be retrieved, but only through means of extreme physical stress to the individual in question. All evidence points to the Cruciatus Curse being the only means of extracting Obliviated memories... and even then it's not guaranteed."

Upon witnessing Aurora's raised dark eyebrows, he gave her a supremely incredulous look.

"So _no_. I cannot help you there."

She shrugged.

"I've gotten you furious enough in the past, I'm sure" Aurora added this with a bemused smirk.

Severus gave a quiet snort and paced slowly around her bed.

"Don't tempt me…" he quipped as sat down upon the mattress at her side. Aurora looked him up and down, calculating her next move with supreme delicacy, a slow hand reached out and entwined around the top of his. Severus gave a slight, momentary shudder.

"So this is somewhat painful for me to say, but…" Sinistra coughed, her thumb caressed his knuckles back and forth, "thanks for being here. I'm sure you could have been better spending your time terrorising various students in your classes, but here you are, bringing me back to earth, yelling obscenities at the medical staff in my honour. I appreciate it."

_And that is how you thank someone like a normal person, Severus._

Then something rather unexpected happened. No retort was made. She felt the shifting of springs and a thin, cold hand sweep across her shoulder blades where it came to rest on the other side. 

 _Is Gitface,_ Gitface _, really, actually holding me? I'm not sure how I feel about this._

He leant into toward her and Aurora looked back at him, ready to slap him, or spit at him, or kiss him, any one of those options would have sufficed – he opened his mouth and said, in the most blasé fashion one could have mustered:

"It's Sunday. Don't flatter yourself."

She was halfway between a snicker before she began to give a great heave, Aurora only had a split second to react as she promptly vomited over the side of the bed. Thankfully in a direction opposite to where Severus was sitting… or was that unfortunately…?

"Of course it would have been far beyond their abilities for them to have pre-emptively given you an anti-emetic potion…" she could hear Severus griping from behind her, though he did appear to have a conjured a bowl for her, which had appeared right in front of her face. 

"Here…"

He gently dragged her back toward him and ran his fingers through her mass of dreadlocks, which he then held in place as Aurora expelled the entire contents of her stomach out into the world for everyone to see. When it felt apparent that she was done, she collapsed back onto the pillows feeling as if she'd been simultaneously hit in the head and the belly with a rather intense bombardment spell.

"I don’t want any potions from them," Aurora objected quietly but surely. 

“I don’t blame you there, I wouldn’t trust them to make coffee let alone medicinal elixirs...”

She shook her head. She didn’t think Severus was gauging just how important this request was to her, though seeing as she had never told him of her innate fear of consuming anything magical, it made sense that he had treated her remark like a flippant quip. 

“No,” Aurora pressed as seriously as she could. “You don’t understand. I _don’t_ want any potions from anyone. I don’t... do potions.” 

Severus gazed down upon her with a rather curious expression. She wondered whether he would question her about this particular insecurity, especially since it was so closely linked to his profession and one of his many great annoying talents, but he did not. Instead he took a far more self-important avenue... 

"Then I think you should discharge yourself and come back to Hogwarts," Severus replied. "I would be more than willing to -"

"Take care of me? I’m touched."

"... I was _going_ to say I would be more than willing to ensure you get the best treatments, but if you like.” Severus shrugged. “There’s no point staying here. You're almost completely fine, save a few arbitrary cognition tests. You might as well be in your own room. With far superior potions on your bedside at your beck and call, I can assure you."

"Beck and call! Merlin, I _have_ trained him well and it all it took was one night."

Aurora was met with both a disapproving shake of his head and a very slight, virtually undetected, twitch at the very corner of his lip.

"Hrm, it might be nice," Sinistra toyed with the fabric on her sheets as she continued. "Being in my own, nice, dark room. Being slaved upon by a certain wizard who appears to enjoy that kind of stuff...”

Severus quickly pushed himself up from the bed and cleared his throat. Aurora smiled behind his back. She absolutely adored this. Toying with him, seeing just how far to go before she could make him start blushing – it was her favourite game in the entire world.

"I’ll let you get dressed," he informed her, pulling up his collar seemingly for protection. "Keep the bowl close..."

"Fine."

She watched him cross the room diagonally to the door and was just about to allow him to leave without another word before a sudden thought came to her.

"Are you substituting my classes while I’m out?" she called out abruptly. "Do you have the necessary materials? Do you need me to write you lesson plans?"

Severus stopped by the doorway and stiffened up.

"While I would absolutely adore taking on the entire astronomy syllabus for years one to seven as we stargaze aimlessly into the abyss together - I am unfortunately a little busy with other matters," he informed her, not bothering to turn around.

Sinistra surreptitiously sniffed at the air as if she were a wolf that had suddenly wandered into the scent of fresh blood.

"… who's my substitute then?"

Severus gave a rather contrived cough and, finally turning to face her at the door, replied: 

"You shouldn't concern yourself with school matters in your condition. Perhaps it is best if you rested here for a few -"

The hairs on the back of Aurora's neck were standing in unison. There was a very good reason he was deflecting her questions, and if she was right in her assertion then Hogwarts castle was about to become the ultimate bloodbath. Forget Macbeth.

" _Snape_ …" she bit deadly as she readied herself to pounce, the venom on her teeth almost visible, "tell me who it is. _Now_."

He turned, slowly, with an expression upon his face reminiscent of someone bracing themselves for a head-on collision.

Severus swallowed hard before opening his mouth slowly.

"Trelawney."

The nerves that were already waiting on the edge of their seats all exploded at once throughout Aurora's entire body.

"WHAT?" her voice blasted him with almost the same amount of fatal force as a Banshee. She began struggling to release herself out of her bedspread prison at once as Severus held up his hands in surrender.

"It wasn't my choice. I swear. I _told_ Minerva you would murder her in cold blood if she ever went near your tower, but Sybill was insistent and there was no one -"

"And would you let Neville Longbottom teach Potions for a week if he was insistent and _there was no one else_?" Aurora scurried around the bed, picking up whatever she could decipher as possibly belonging to her – which, to be fair, consisted only of her wand and her trousers and waistcoat. She gave a startle when she suddenly wondered if she had anything on; a quick feel around her person revealed that she was in fact wearing a hospital gown.

Severus was still looking slightly flabbergasted and panicked by the door.

"That is _hardly_ an appropriate comparison. I mean she is… well, she is _sort_ of a teach -"

He was met with an outstanding glower over the pile of clothes and nodded in surrender.

"Okay, you're right. But look… don't cause yourself any more undue stress. What horrors will she be capable of unleashing on a mere day’s worth of classes?"

She could tell he knew immediately that he should not have asked that question, for her drive to run back to the castle and push the old fraud off her tower just became a hundred times stronger. Severus had to physically rush forward and hold her back.

"You are going to make yourself worse!" he reasoned. "Then she'll be taking your classes for months!"

"She bloody well won't! Not if you're there to put a stop to it if I die on the way!"

"Christ, Aurora…"

"Help me with this stupid thing!" Aurora demanded as her shaking hands fiddled with the straps on her gown. Seemingly resigned to accept the inevitable, Severus came up behind her and began picking at the knots with his much steadier, gentler hands.

"I don't know, I think I much rather prefer you in this than your robes," he smirked as the knots released themselves, exposing her dark, bare back. 

Aurora turned to slip her hands into the straps of her bra and had to suppress a bemused grin as she was met with a very set of determinedly averted black eyes.

"We've been sleeping together for how many years, and you still can't look at me in this state…?" Aurora asked slowly as she pulled on her other garments.

Severus looked down at the ground, his teeth toying with his bottom lip.

"I believe you’ll find we've never _slept_ together. Not in any literal sense."

"Ah, yes, technicalities. And why did they feel to take off all my clothes for a memory loss issue? Urgh…" she had to steady herself on the end of the bedpost as the whole room began swimming around her once more; the nausea was hastily building up inside her belly again.

Severus quickly clasped onto her arm and pulled her down upon the bed.

"Look," he stated plainly and simply. "We need to get yourself discharged properly: otherwise they are going to think I scaled in here and kidnapped you."

On the verge of losing consciousness again, Aurora was no very big physical threat in getting back into bed; she assumed Severus felt safe in this knowledge… given normal circumstances she would have thrown him across the room.

"People usually assume such things about you, Sev?" she spluttered.

"Everyone I've ever met, yes," he replied simply.

Aurora's head gradually stopped spinning so much to induce the need to projectile vomit all over the room. She closed her eyes, shook it off and stood herself up again, to the complete bewilderment of the other wizard in the room.

"Shall we just not?" she asked nonchalantly, pulling on her last boot and patting down her maroon jacket. "I need to get to my classroom in quite a hurry, so if I'd rather skip the tedious discharging ordeal… let them take it up with Dumbledore" Sinistra motioned for him to get the door.

Severus gave something of a sarcastic bow as he reached for the door, midway toward it, however, his hand returned promptly to his side.

"How up are you for Apparition?" he enquired. "I can get you into a dark place immediately."

Aurora clapped her hands together decisively. "Good thinking - let's do that, let's break the hell out here and get that fraudulent bint out of my tower. I will vomit on you, though, as long as you’re ok with that."

"Fabulous. Although you will spend your first night back washing my clothes."

"Sure. I've always wondered what you would look like stalking around the castle in pastel, salmon-coloured robes..."

Severus smirked and held out his arm.

"Side-along" he explained at her curious expression. "I don't want you getting lost and I have something to attend to before we return to the castle. The Healers may have placed an Anti-Disapparition spell on you anyway due to your confusion. _If_ they were doing their jobs correctly. Which I _doubt_."

"Where are we -"

But he jabbed his arm aggressively in the air toward her, signalling the end of questions. Aurora readied her body for what she knew would be the roller coaster ride from hell and snaked her hand around Severus's forearm; he clasped her tight to him, though she was quite sure that there was absolutely no requirement to do so, and closed his eyes in deep concentration.

Sinistra looked back hastily and gave a quick scan of the room for any intruders. The last thing her eyes came to rest on prior to whirling away from the hospital was Severus's reading material during his, presumably lengthy, time at her bedside. Her insides gave a pleasant heave as she recognised it to be one of her research papers for one of several magical astronomical journals, one of her most recent submissions regarding spectroscopic orbits and quasar properties and their effect on the potency of certain curses. He had actually taken the time to acquire it and had read it in her presence.

There was something far more intimate in that than all the physical contact they had shared. 

And, though she would never breathe a word of it to him, Aurora allowed herself a final smile in gratitude, and rested her head upon his shoulder under the guise of feeling a tad queasy, before they disappeared away.


	20. Memoriam

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus and Aurora make a small detour.

They appeared exactly where Severus had promised: under the protective darkness of a vast forest, the sky completely obliterated with branches, bare as they may have been…

Aurora only made a few steps before she fell in a heap onto the forest floor, clutching the relentlessly spinning Earth for dear life.

"Ok, maybe not a good idea…" she murmured mid-vomit. Her head felt like it was caught in a vice, and it was slowly being cracked open in the most painstaking fashion imaginable.

Severus merely watched on from above.

"Oh, it's fine, really – don't bother to help me…" Aurora spluttered, spitting out the rest of her stomach contents mixed with saliva and god knows what into the tall grass. She blinked up at him through stinging tears and noticed that he looked quite preoccupied, looking into the distance as if his mind was very, very far away.

"Can we get on with whatever you have to do so I can go to the castle, kill Trelawney, and then go to bed?" she implored, struggling to sit up.

Severus continued to stare into the abyss for a few moments before speaking, though his eyes remained transfixed.

"Will you be alright by yourself until I get back?" he asked.

Aurora shrugged. "S'pose. You won't be long?"

He shook his head, and without another word began walking away through the vast shrubbery, leaving the confused and nauseated witch to frown after him from the floor. It wasn't often Severus was this vague, this far away and removed from the world, and though he had not given a single clue – there was something in the back of her head which was pushing her to follow him, it resembled something almost like concern, even worry. The fact that he _hadn't_ given a single clue to what he was thinking was probably what did it.

Every cell in her body was aching at this stage, and she was surprised if after this she was going to retain any piece of her brain. The desire to simply crawl up into the comforting long grass was the most tempting thing in the world right now… but then she remembered his voice coming to her when she needed it most, she remembered his cold hand on her temples as he sent her to sleep so that she avoided the shock of what happened, she remembered him sitting there reading her articles as he waited for her to awaken, cursing and threatening all who dared not to put her first…

She remembered him walking off into a forest once before and finding him unconscious and freezing in a ditch.

Aurora cursed Severus's name into the wind and pushed herself up with all of her willpower, stifling a little moan as she did so.

He had either Apparated somewhere else or he had run away from her very fast because she could not find a trace of him as she hobbled in his direction. The Homenum Revelio spell revealed nothing, but that could have meant a number of things… possibly that he had made himself Undetectable which was not unlike Severus, or possibly because she was not doing the spell correctly, which was not unlike her.

After what seemed like an age of wandering around in circles, she spotted a distant figure out in the clearing, from the sounds radiating around her it was clear that they were by the ocean, it couldn't be anyone but him. Aurora observed the skies to ensure there was sufficient cloud coverage before she stepped out into the open.

Blinking and stumbling he way to him, she noticed that he was crouched, and quite still. The only thing that stirred against the wind was his cloak.

Aurora closed her eyes and allowed the salty air to infiltrate every portion of her lungs… it seemed to clear her head and body in a way the stuffy hospital could never hope to achieve; it was almost meditative, centring… perhaps this was why Severus was here…

She was positive that he hadn't heard or felt her coming up behind him, because he remained completely silent as she stood over him, Aurora was halfway opening her mouth to make some kind of noticeable sound before he spoke.

"I told you to wait behind."

But it wasn't accusatory, nor was it even slightly irritable, it was as if he were merely referencing something previously discussed in the most casual manner.

"Since when have I listened to you?" Aurora replied as she frowned upon him with curiosity. When he did not turn back or move a single muscle she sidestepped a few paces and followed his gaze. Her heart felt like retching when she realised it looked like a makeshift cenotaph dug well into the earth, its smooth stone surface engraved with the words:

_Eileen_

_1935 – 1991_

There was nothing else. The stone was probably far too small to contain any sort of endearing message, the beauty of the seaside, however, more than made up for its simplicity. Aurora could do nothing but stand idly by.

"There was going to be a proper grave," Severus said suddenly, as if sensing the confusion behind his back. "But she was never happy in Cokeworth. She wasn't happy anywhere."

Sinistra nodded sympathetically and glanced around her.

"This is a beautiful place for her to be laid to rest," she smiled sadly to herself.

"We came here once," Severus went on; it was as if he were talking to the stone more than to the witch standing next to him. "The seaside. Just a day. One day we had to get away from… him. It was the only time I got to see her free of Tobias, free of the Muggle world, the wizarding world, everything that disappointed her..."

Preparing her head to be bitten off as she did so, Aurora slowly bent down and sat… her legs on one side of her body and arms on the other. Severus gave a momentary jolt in her direction before turning back.

"I'm sure you weren't a disappointment to her," she said really without even thinking, just to provide some sort of comfort.

Of course with Snape, she should have thought harder.

"Yes," he murmured darkly, picking absentmindedly at the grass next to him "I'm sure every mother wants a Death Eater son, a son belonging to a group who threatened to kill people like the man she bizarrely loved until the end -"

"But you _came back_ , Severus, that's the difference," Aurora replied heatedly. "And she knew it. You visited her all the time, brought her food, brought her clothes. You were the only person there for her at the end. I don't think _that's_ a disappointment."

This time Severus turned to face her and he looked far more livid. "But I wasn't there at the end, was I? She died alone, cold and hungry in a cell surrounded by beasts who suck the life out anyone who sets foot in that place for more than two minutes! And it was all my –"

But he cut himself off swiftly and pushed himself up violently from where they sat. Sinistra did not follow, nor look to where he had gone; she merely sat by the stone, wondering what on earth could have happened to this woman… and what could have happened between her and son to make him believe that everything was his fault. And Severus would just as soon join the circus before he told her anything.

 _It didn't sound like the poor woman had much happiness in her life though_ , she thought with a sigh.

Aurora turned her head to look back at Severus now, who was eyeing her sitting next to his mother's quiet memorial with a kind of morbid curiosity. Without thinking, she slipped her hands behind her neck and undid the necklace which lied upon her collarbones – strings of silver beads inscribed with stars and Adinkra runes which she had acquired on her last voyage home to Mali, Africa - pulled it free from her and wrapped it gently around the stone.

"It was nice to meet you, Eileen."

She motioned for Severus to help her up but when no such assistance came she turned around to find him staring at her in a way she could not quite comprehend. His features were distorted with what seemed like great pain… spiked with an inner anguish that she was sure was not for her, rather reserved for himself.

"I've always liked that necklace" he said, his chest rising and falling in heightened succession.

Sinistra gave the simplest of smiles. "That is why I'm leaving it here."

Severus closed his eyes slightly, just slightly longer than a slow blink to be perceptible. The mood between them was unbearable now, almost agonising.

As if he couldn't take a single more word, he hurriedly stepped toward her and helped pull her up.

"Home," he said curtly, clearly unable to bear being here a single second more.


	21. Don't Say

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aurora almost kills Trelawney. Aurora also has some rather disturbing thoughts...

The walk to Hogwarts castle from the gate was theoretically very short – but to Severus it had never felt so unbearably protracted in his life.

The two professors walked silently side by side in the dim late afternoon light - Aurora looking as pained as he felt. He was so angry at himself that he could have clawed his eyes out if he were alone. He couldn't believe that he had allowed himself to feel what he had just felt for her - as she had laid down a treasured possession for someone she had never met before. He _couldn't_ go through with it, they had become too close, too attached.

At least _he_ had become too attached.

Severus knew how the story would end… it was the way of his cursed life… something would inevitably happen to her. He would destroy her life just as he had done everyone else he had ever loved.

 _Loved._ Loved! He could have cut out his own brain if he had the ability.

And what if his feelings for her were not returned? How could they be, anyway? He was nothing but a distraction to her, he was sure of it. Sinistra exuded so much confidence and finesse that he would bet his life that she could have anyone she wanted if she tried. If they were not stuck in a big stone prison for the majority of the year she would forget he even existed.

Rightly so. Severus only _wished_ he could forget that he existed.

And what if Dumbledore's concerns were genuine? What if their relationship, one-sided as it might be, ended up swaying him away from his cause? _The_ cause he had dedicated his life to? To Lily? The guilt was so overwhelming that he had draw on all of his strength to block it out of his mind, else he go mad.

How dare she exist. How dare she come back to teach here after they had parted ways at school. How dare he feel this way. How _dare_ he be so weak.

He noticed that they had barely passed Hagrid's hut and they were still more than halfway off from the sanctity of being able to disappear in the castle; Severus shook his head aggressively in irritation, just wanting to be free from her presence so he could concentrate again.

Severus thought his prayers had all been answered when Aurora suddenly looked directly upward at the Astronomy Tower, which loomed above them like some sagacious goddess.

"Do you see that?" Aurora barked. Severus looked to where she was shooting daggers and frowned, not sure whether he was supposed to answer correctly.

"See what?" was what he settled for.

"The light!" she spat angrily, jabbing her finger multiple times toward the tower as if she was having to explain something to a particularly dim seven-year-old. "It's a Sunday and the _candles have been lit in my tower_! That - " she went on a tirade of expletives as she broke into a run for the castle doors, leaving a dumbfounded Severus in her wake, wondering if he should take this unexpected opportunity to escape back into the dungeons or whether he should follow her in order to prevent a murder from occurring.

As much as he detested Trelawney, he really couldn't have that on his hands right now, so he hastily followed.

Considering her current infirmities, Severus was astounded that she had made it up to the top tower before he did. He supposed years of making the same journey over and over back and forth on a daily basis equipped her body well for it, even if she had just escaped from hospital.

He got to the top of the tower, panting and doubled-over under the speed at which she had sprinted up there, to find that the doors had already been thrown open and very irate Astronomy and Divination professors in the middle of a hearty confrontation.

"WHAT ARE THESE?" Aurora was bellowing at an equally furious Sybill, who was in comparison, however, looking rather uncomfortable at the same time – being outside the realm of her usual cosy kingdom.

A cloud of cards showered the spluttering Divination teacher, some of which tumbled to the floor, others became caught by the wind and flew determinedly out of the towers open archways.

"You're teaching _tarot_ in my class? To _my_ students? TAROT?"

"It is necessary for planetary spreads, my dear! It is a complex and classical aspect of the delicate intertwining of the zodiac and the deck… something you would have had absolutely no aptitude for, so I will forgive you for your ignorance!"

Aurora threw her hands to her head as if she couldn't have heard anything worse in her whole life.

"Planetary _what?_ I don't even know what that is!"

"That does not come as a surprise to me…" Trelawney shook her head sympathetically as she picked up the remanets of one of her decks from the floorboards.

"Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding," Aurora exclaimed to herself as she caught sight of a line of colossal zodiac charts which now hung upon her classroom walls, she hastily stormed over to them and began to rip them down one-by-one, to the complete indifference of Sybill's screams of protest.

"STOP! How dare you, you ungrateful Muggle of a witch!" she shrieked, following the other woman around the room and hastily scooping up the tattered charts at Aurora's manic heels. Severus couldn't help but smirk from the doorway.

"I come all the way up here! I try and broaden up the steadily shrinking minds of your students… the seventh year Astronomy students! Almost _none_ of them, actually I would say _none_ of them, knew how to analyse their own natal charts – didn't even know what houses the planets were in! They merely sat there rolling their eyes! How you are still employed is beyond me to be frank!"

"How you are still aliveafter finishing that sentence is beyond _me._ " Aurora whispered viciously, merely centimetres from Sybill's face. "Get. Out. Of. My. Tower. Before you find yourself toppling out of it."

Sybill raised her head haughtily and, glaring through her ginormous round glasses, replied swiftly: "gladly! There is no getting through to some people. You might as well be a brick wall for all the good it does you! Goodnight, professor."

She turned and stumbled out of the room, wobbling comically under the weight of all her charts and cards and almost bumping head on into Severus who was almost completely obliterated by the darkness outside of the doorway.

"You again!" she exclaimed with a start, as she attempted to shove her way past to get to the staircase.

Severus returned this declaration with a raised eyebrow – though of course this was impossible to see in the light that they had been given.

"Your powers of foresight are simply astonishing…" he quipped to the back of her tangled hair as it bobbed furiously up and down the spiral staircase, followed by a trial of zodiac symbols and the odd tarot card on various steps. Severus smirked to himself, utterly bemused by this entire exchange, and turned around to see Aurora doubled up against one of the stone pillars.

"Bed," she stammered to her knees. "I need to go to bed."

Severus simultaneously hurried to catch her while also rolling his eyes.

"So now I have to take you _all_ the way down the stairs to your quarters too?"

Aurora was clutching her head in her hands but still managed a retort. "Whose stupid idea was it to follow me up here in the first place, might I ask?"

His first thought was to pick her up in his arms, before he realised just how much he did not want to do that on multiple levels. And so they ended up struggling down several flights of stairs together, under Aurora's utmost refusal to have any magic used upon her ("do you realise how utterly ridiculous I am going to look floating along behind you if we get seen by anyone?!"), coming to rest at her door, at which point Severus braced himself upon the wooden frame struggling to catch his breath.

"Somebody needs to run a few flights of stairs every day to build up some muscle…" was Aurora's final wisecrack before she stumbled into her bedroom. "Thank you, darling!" he heard her yell sarcastically through the second set of doors. Perhaps not quite her final wisecrack. He was halfway biting his tongue furiously and stalking away to never speak to her again before he heard the unmistakable sound of projectile vomiting.

_Why did I have to follow? What nameless, dreadful, indestructible curse infiltrated my bones and made me follow her?_

And so, around half an hour later, she again opened her door to be greeted with a very morose looking wizard holding a large bowl filled with a deep, blue liquid.

"Drink this," Severus instructed, waiting for her to step back to allow him into her quarters where he set down the bowl… light blue vapours rose from the metal rim in tight little spirals.

"It'll be a right sight better than the St. Mungo's concoctions, I assure you," he said as he scooped up a gobletful of the anti-emetic potion and handed it to Aurora, whose face had drooped even further toward the floor since he had seen it last. Her hand trembled as she reached for it, but she still managed to survey him suspiciously over the rim of the goblet.

"I shouldn't be so willingly trusting when strange men hand me goblets of nameless potions, you know."

"Always the sceptic."

"Always searching for the truth." She corrected cryptically.

Severus stopped in his tracks behind her as she stumbled back into the bedroom. To his right he found himself on par with a massive blackboard that stretched from the bottom of the floor to the ceiling; every inch of it saturated in numbers and mathematical symbols, hastily written in chalk and some barely legible – as if she had experienced sudden attacks of inspiration and had rushed to attack the problems before they flittered out of her mind. He had to admit it was a rather oddly beautiful sight to behold… searching for truth… she certainly lived up to her word.

"What do you mean?" he asked, his eyes still fixated on the far too many equations he annoyingly could not comprehend.

"Come here," he heard her demand from the other room.

_Alright, Severus, let's not start this again shall we?_

"I just wanted to make sure you drank your potion," he retorted from the other side of the stone. "Contrary to what you may believe, I do have other things to do this evening besides running around trying to stop you from dying or killing other members of staff."

"Oh, come _here,_ would you? I promise you it won't be a marriage proposal – I _guarantee_ you that is the last thing on my mind."

Hating himself every step of the way, Snape popped his head brusquely around the doorframe.

" _What_?" he insisted with as much acid as he could muster.

Aurora was sitting on the bed with her legs to her chest, swirling the empty potion goblet with most of the colour back in her face.

"Thank you," she said. 

"You just-!" Severus had a biting retort ready even before contemplating just what she was going to say. "Sorry?" he backpedalled.

" _Thank you,_ Christ, is that so hard for you to take? Thanks for the potion. And the visiting. The caring. It was nice... nice is good, and different. Not sure I want it _all_ the time but I will accept it for today."

A lifetime of constantly being on edge, of readying himself for the next attack, the next insult or the next blow, did not prepare Severus well for moments of softness… for anything resembling warmth. He did not know what to do, did not know what the next step was, what he should say, who he should insult. His mind raced a million paces ahead of him. He wondered whether it she was saying this out of mockery, or malevolence, or wanted to tear him into a destabilised state so it would be easier to let him down.

He didn't want to start saying anything because he was not sure he could finish it - and it was the most terrifying thought.

Aurora knew exactly what he was thinking, he could tell immediately from the way that the corners of her dark lips had twisted in a knowing curl. Her body language and facial expressions were so very soft and tranquil in contrast to only a few minutes ago… Severus had done his job well (naturally), he could no longer see any reason to stay.

"So," she set the goblet down on her bedside cabinet and shifted to sit upon her bedspread with her legs crossed. "You said you had an idea of who was behind this?"

"Yes, but this is not the time for discussion."

"Oh, I think it is…" Aurora said with an almost mocking laugh. "I really _would_ like to have a good chat to the person who erased something they had no right to take from me: wouldn't you?"

Severus sighed heavily.

"Believe me, if it were me I wouldn't care half as much as I do now. I am getting to the bottom of it."

"Well, that's lovely and everything," Sinistra continued without a beat as he experienced a voracious yearning to punch himself in the face. "But I think it is my prerogative to have some sort of idea of why someone messed with my brain. You know how much I loathe Legilimency and Occlumency and all those mind games of yours…" she shot him a dark look as if ensuring him of her feelings on the matter. "… so I'm sure you realise how hard it is for me to ask you to perform Legilimency on me."

"And what good would that do?" he retorted, feeling oddly hot under the collar. "I _told_ you that all I will find is muddle and blackness if I tried to break into your head. I don't want to do it, anyway."

"Why? You could at least try to make sense of things. Figure out what the last few moments I remembered were. I'm not asking you to do this lightly, you know!" she added angrily.

"I'm not doing it because I don't _want_ to do it, is that enough for you! I don't want to do it because it serves no purpose to me! Mostly I don't want to do it because I promised you I would never do that to you!"

He felt a surge of victory in his bones as it appeared to be Borealis's time to be stumped. Her brain looked as though it were working a million miles per hour to break through the logical arguments he had just hurled at her, and then something clicked, and he readied himself for the rebuttal.

"It's different! It's not like you're invading anything, or breaking my trust. I _trust_ you to do this. I've always…" she looked away from his gaze hastily and glared at one of the dim lanterns on her wall, shaking her head, on the verge of something Severus did not want to witness he was sure.

"You're a bastard," – well that wasn't particularly what he was expecting, but he let her continue – "you're malicious and sarcastic, you're the biggest arsehole I've ever met, I have hated you in the past, and you create certain violent tendencies within me that I never knew _existed._  But - and it pains me greatly to say it -"

"Don't say it." Severus pleaded.

_Please don't._

"But I trust you. I trust you more than I've trusted anyone before. I only take potions if they've been made by you because I don't trust _anyone_ else to do it correctly..."

She gave a great heavy sigh and continued.

"Do you realise how frightening this is for me? To open up my entire life, an infinite range of my thoughts and memories for someone to take and observe at their leisure? Would I ask that of someone I did not trust implicitly not to hurt me?"

Severus had no more physical reservation left and allowed his head fall into his hands.

Trust. Trust was something he thought he had always yearned for – the finest gift anyone could ever bequeath him; because he knew if he would never be worthy of love, he might have had a chance (however slim and hopeless) of perhaps being worthy of someone's trust. He could count on one hand the amount of people who had ever trusted him in his lifetime, and as the years had passed he could not even safely say that he had anyone left on that one hand.

Dumbledore may have said that he trusted him, but lately he was not quite sure of that either.

If she had known everything there was to know about him…

"That is why," he explained as softly as he could through the gaps of his long, thin fingers "I absolutely cannot do to you what I promised not to. No matter what change of circumstance."

He could not deny that it was the most tempting thing in the world, the desire to simply break into her thoughts. Whenever she moved too close to him or smiled at him or took off one of her most treasured possessions and placed it upon his own mother's grave he wanted nothing more than to know exactly what she was feeling… whether she was fabricating her emotions in order to get something out of him. His mind itched with desire to look her in the eye and enter her world.

But he could not. For he would never be able to forgive himself for betraying her: and seeing as he was beyond redemption in his eyes anyway for all his deplorable actions in the past, it could very well be the very last thing that finally broke him.

The pressure of the mattress increased beneath him, and he felt a small hand snake up his back where it came to rest upon his shoulder.

"Severus…"

He felt shivers run through his entire body at the sound of her uttering his name while being concurrently touched. It was not something that oft happened. But at the same time it was as if microscopic needles were penetrating the part of his body which she had touched, it was unbearable to feel, but it would also be unbearable to leave.

"I appreciate the sentiment, I really…" she drew her hand up toward his hair and swept it around his ear, this time he could not help but give a noticeable shiver as well, he also could not help his eyes from closing and allowing himself just that brief moment of falling. His head lolled back onto her shoulder as Sinistra scraped her fingernails across his so very neglected black hair, setting the nerves there on fire, his thoughts became muddled and lost in her grasp; he couldn't remember what he was worrying about… even though he knew there had to be a reason, somewhere, why he could not stay here with her anymore. He didn't much want to work on reasoning much at the present time.

Slight pressure, light as a feather, upon the ear which she had exposed told him that her lips were there. He felt slight, barely audible crackling as she opened up her mouth.

"You don't have to fight battles on your own, you know," Aurora whispered, now fully bracing his body in her arms. "Especially not my battles. We're on equal ground, you and I, and you know it."

Images of the most horrific nature precipitously broke down the doors of his mind. Of her suffering beyond any comprehension of what pain used to be… of her being used as nothing more as bait in order to force him to reveal his true loyalties. Merlin knows now that they had gotten this far he would never be prepared to allow any suffering on her part in order to maintain his cover, that was the most dangerous realisation of all.

Everything could become undone. Everything.

It was torture of the wickedest kind to pull himself up and out of her embrace and her fingers and lips. He heard an audible sound of disbelief behind him and it became all the more torturous.

"We… _this_ … we can't…" he stammered, straightening up his robes in the places they had become dishevelled in her hands.

"You make it rather impossible to know what ' _this_ ' even is" Aurora said with an unmistakable bite of poison on her tongue. "Here…"

Severus turned around just in time to catch a hurtling silver goblet in his direction. Sinistra shot him the most contemptuous of glares.

"Thanks for the potion," she bit acidly, and twisted her entire body violently away from him, in the dim candlelight of her bedroom all he could now see was a mass of black dreadlocks upon her white pillow. Severus watched it for a while - insentiently gnawing on his fingernails as he did so and feeling rather distressed.

When his fingers hurt adequately enough and he was sure that no other sound was going to make it past his lips, he swayed awkwardly on the spot and then let his feet carry him toward to the door.

"You don't deserve me" she called from the bed, the hurt in her voice now unmistakable and it was this, more than anything, that felt like a dagger in his stomach. "You don't deserve the way I feel for - for you."

This was said much more quietly; she could very well have never intended him to hear it but he did. The dagger twisted in further. He wished more than life itself he could divulge to her what he truly felt, what he tried to hide even from himself, the sheer amount of agonising affection for her… but it was impossible… the wall was too high and the dangers far too perilous.

"No" Severus replied shortly. "I never could deserve anything of the sort from you."

He closed the door, stood with his head hanging for a while, unable to muster the energy to hold himself upright, before escaping the only place in this castle – this place that usually filled him with nothing but painful memories and traumatic visions – that felt like home.


	22. The Half-Blood Children

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Queen of Snakes is mildly amused with her new nickname, far more than 'Borealis', anyway...

The end of the year always brought the heaviest workload with it; subsequently the teachers, one-by-one, retreated into their own private spaces in the lead up to exams.

This year, however, the need for personal space appeared extra important as there was quite the high of tension between several of the said teachers. Septima Vector was clearly still avoiding Aurora like she was some particularly nasty virus (and Charity appeared to be following suit) and spent most of her evenings locked in her office, Trelawney was in such a bad mood over Aurora and hers heated confrontation that she came down from her tower even less then usual (not a bad result overall), and Severus was no where to be seen.

There was only one day a week where everyone was absolutely required to be together in the same room, and that was the weekly staff meeting on Friday afternoons after classes were done. Slowly, the staff room's long table gradually filled up with all the poor fools who desperately (and usually futilely) attempted to cram something into the impenetrable skulls of the various hormonal adolescent witches and wizards of the country. Today they all particularly dispassionate to be there, Aurora certainly at the top of that list. There were a million and one things she could be doing just before exams, and sitting here going through assessment and exam targets and results over the past school year was not at the top of her list.

At the conclusion of the meeting, she was halfway rushing toward the door in order to get some much needed fresh air when she was unceremoniously cornered by Minerva.

"Are you quite alright?" her colleague asked quietly, sweeping her face concernedly over Aurora's own – which she rightfully assumed must've looked quite startling given the way Minerva was eyeing her. "I know it's been a while since your accident, but no one will think anything less of you if you take some leave… you've prepared adequately for exams-"

Sinistra shook her head.

"I'd rather see my N.E.W.T.'s through. I have a couple who are thinking of applying for the Academy this year, which means a lot of references and paperwork."

"Inspired a new set of Astronomers, I see?"

Aurora sniffed amusedly. "Not oft it happens. Most of them would rather a career specialising in loud bangs and sparklers."

McGonagall gave a thin lipped smile, and nodded a silent understanding. "It is a testament to you that there are at least some students who are graduating with some substance behind them."

"I would say that is a testament to most of us. _Most_ of us…" Aurora repeated with a dark inflection as she locked eyes with Sybill, who had just shoved her way past the Transfiguration and Astronomy professors muttering something about 'insipid brick walls' or the like...

"Why on earth did you let her substitute my class?" she added, as she and Minerva left the staff room side by side and made their way into the slightly sunny corridor.

Minerva straightened her back defensively. "You know I wouldn't have done it if there had been anyone else I could have called upon."

"There were tarot cards, and birth charts!"

The elder witch made an extremely sympathetic noise.

"Please don’t rub it in, Aurora, I already feel quite terrible."

Sinistra chuckled to spite herself. It was only after she had done it that she realised just how alien and outlandish it felt. That was not a good sign.

The pair crossed the entrance hall preparatory to heading into the Great Hall for a quick dinner. Aurora took a side glance out of the gargantuan front doors and saw a lone gamekeeper in the distance, bottle in one hand and looking extremely stationary and forlorn.

McGonagall was gesturing for Aurora to follow her into the Great Hall. "Shall we? I am in great need of a beef pie or two."

"I'll be along…" Sinistra replied, frowning curiously at the figure outside. "Save me a pie or three."

She bid her friend farewell and crossed the grounds toward him, the light was hastily retreating so fast that he was swiftly becoming more silhouette than man. As she got closer, she could hear the distinct sound of sniffing.

He did not notice her until she was right next to him, perhaps she had tread too gently and thoughtfully, as she did not particularly want to barge into his thoughts… but nor did she want to leave a crying Hagrid alone.

"Are you… are you alright, Hagrid?" she pressed gently, he gave a great jump.

"Oh, professor, didn' see yeh," he sniffed, turning his head slightly away from her, which made the tears on his cheeks all the clearer. "Yeah, I'm fine. Fine, thanks. Yerself?"

Aurora raised her eyebrows but didn't object to his rather poor self-assessment.

"Never been better," she replied sarcastically, taking a seat beside him on the small stone wall outside his cabin. Hagrid's watery red eyes swept over her weary looking face.

"I doubt tha', if I'm honest professor…"

"Oh, you do?" Aurora pressed, eyebrows once again sky-high.

"Well, I mean, that stuff with yer head and all," Hagrid replied. "Can't have done yeh any good can it?"

Aurora leant back on the wall and looked up at the sky.

"I suppose so. It's hard to explain what it's like, losing a few weeks of your life. I was just about to liken it to a coma, except it's not really is it? I mean I was walking, talking, presumably living the entire time… and then, just nothing…"

Hagrid nodded solemnly. "Mustn't have be nice for yeh that's fer sure."

"The treacle tart you sent made my recovery all the more bearable." Aurora smirked into the night, recalling opening her bedroom door one morning to a cake with the consistency of a rock - and a small, handwritten note saying: _To Aurora. Hope you remember things soon. Love, Hagrid._

It had perked her up so much that she had placed the note in her bedroom cabinet.

Hagrid gave a pleased chortle, but his great big sniffs were still evident. Sinistra looked down at the bottle of Blishen's Firewhisky in his large hands.

"Got another one of those?" she asked.

Ten minutes later she and Hagrid were sitting together, Aurora cross-legged on the wall and he on the floor so that their heads were relatively level, sipping from bottles of Firewhisky and looking out for any peering eyes as the students left from dinner and to their dormitories. The only light near them were the lamps and fire coming from inside Hagrid's cabin.

Aurora gave a great grimace as she took another sip.

"Been a while since I downed this, I can tell you. I think it was my graduation night from the Academy…" Good times.

Hagrid was nodding, but she knew he was not really there.

"What's _wrong_ , Hagrid?" she implored earnestly, placing an affectionate hand on his head. "You've not been yourself since…"

Aurora wracked her brains, trying to think (something she had only just recently been brave enough to do since the 'incident'), and a sudden memory came to mind.

"Since that night I was in the forest," she ended. It appeared that this was enough to break him. Hagrid hung his head, and great big silent tears were rolling down his cheeks harder than ever.

"Sorry, I -" he whimpered, taking out a tablecloth-sized handkerchief and dabbing his eyes with it. "I mean – I s-should've seen it coming, shouldn' I? What else was gonna happen? She were never gonna get outta there alive."

Aurora frowned, bewilderment setting in. "Seen what coming? Who was never going to get out of what alive?"

He took another long sip of Firewhisky and shook his head, clearly going further was very painful for him.

"You -" Aurora started before a distant spark of comprehension flitted into her thoughts. _She was never going to get out of there alive._

"Did you… did you know Sev's – Severus's – mother, Hagrid?"

A whimpering noise told her everything: she did not need to scrutinise any further. Considering just how long it had been since Eileen died, it obviously wasn't any kind of distant, casual relationship either.

"Hagrid, I'm sorry… I didn't realise…" And I was blasé about telling him too, Aurora thought. Nice one, woman.

"In the same year, me and Leenie" Hagrid sobbed, swirling around his bottle and gazing sadly into what was left of its contents. "We was always so fascinated with magical creatures… well, yeh know, _interestin'_ ones at least. That's how we became friends. She were always fascinated by odd things, Leenie was. Anythin' different and unusual and she were all over it…"

He gave a great hiccup.

"Never knew anyone inter dangerous creatures even more than me," he continued sadly.

Aurora was finding that rather hard to believe, but she indulged him. "More than _you_?" she scoffed, grimacing at another sip. "She must've been a brave woman…"

"Gave up her whole life for that Muggle, didn' she? Wouldn' find me doing that."

"Ah," Aurora nodded her understanding. Well, he was right about that. She had moved countries herself, but letting go of all of her magical roots? Integrating into Muggle society and starting from scratch? That was a special kind of bravery. "No… no. you're right there."

She bit on the tip of her tongue, thinking carefully on her next words as he continued sniffing in the dark.

"Did you… did you speak to her after school?"

"Nah," Hagrid replied. "I mean I came here after I was expelled and never really left, did I? An' Leenie seemed to just disappear after school. Well, she did in a way: that's what the Muggle world does ter yeh. We only met again just before… just before she was sent to Azkaban, she left the Muggle and I was the first person she managed to track down. All bruised and bloody she was. I never realised…" he gave a great wail "…never realised just what he put her through."

Aurora gave a quiet gasp, horror etched on every inch of her face.

"I didn't know that..." she said, feeling completely floored now. It was extremely hard not to make some rather painful comparisons between Eileen and her own mother: although admittedly the details were vastly different.

"Drove me mad when she was sent down fer his death," Hagrid continued. "No proof or anythin', but she had given up on everything by that stage yeh know? Didn' put up much of a fight. Just accepted her fate. I... I just…"

As cathartic as unleashing his feelings appeared to be, it was obvious that he couldn't take much more and was well and truly done. The tears were making a puddle in his palms now.

"I loved her so much… could've loved her more than anyone loved her, t-the way she deserved to be! But now – now she's gone. I can't…"

The bottle clunked to the floor and the gamekeeper great shaggy head drooped into his knees – his body convulsing with sobs. Sinistra closed her eyes to prevent the stinging sensation welling up in her eyes from becoming tears of her own, and she dropped to the ground next to him where she rested her head upon his arm. And there they sat, silently, until very late into the cool night.

* * *

 

It was impossible to get the conversation she had with Hagrid out of her head all evening. Aurora retired to the Astronomy Tower with the intention of fixing a few of the more temperamental telescopes in preparation for the exams looming in two days' time (a task which she assumed would take up her entire weekend, as she refused to use any magic on the scopes, preferring to maintain them by hand), but all she could see were battered and bruised women in her head. 

First Eileen, who had obviously spent years of hell being pummelled by her Muggle husband… and then her own mother… whom she had trained herself to never think about, else be thrown back into a world of pain and suffering she did not need nor have the time for...

It was thankfully a very clear and cool night and so Aurora could easily discover whether her collimations of the broken telescopes were working. One after the other, she would twist the hundreds of different golden and silver bolts on on the complex sets of machinery, stopping briefly to have a look through the optics of the eyepieces and collaborating them with what she expected to see in the sky tonight (thank Merlin it was cloudless this evening).

When most of the smaller telescopes were squeaky clean and new, Aurora turned her attention to her own, colossal refractor telescope – a vast, golden kingdom in the middle of the tower, its metallic truss tube (about the size of a small elephant) pointed straight upward through the domed ceiling which was painted with constellations and symbols. She set down her bag filled with various spanners, bolts and spray bottles of specialised cleaning potion and lay herself flat on her back, wriggling upward into the inner workings of the scope where she started to hammer away at the outer casing by jabbing her wand a few times at the bolts. They began to loosen and fell into her awaiting lap.

This was cathartic work. She had always enjoyed working with her hands, almost as much as her brain. For a few brief moments she could forget the thoughts her conversation with Hagrid had instilled in her head… she loosened the four screws on the secondary casing and the great, glistening mirror from within the inner walls of the telescope came into view, showering her with beams of silver light.

While she set to work calibrating the trajectory of the complex set of mirrors and focal pieces, visions of a woman being dragged out into the street by a masked band of men kept swimming to the forefront of her mind, she was screaming in pain and screaming for her daughter… screaming for Aurora… who was crying and cowering behind a dustbin, crying for her mother…

The adult Aurora wiped the cold sweat from her forehead, unsure whether it was due to physical exertion or the rising feeling of panic these memories always gave her. She took out the sterilised cleaning potion, which was contained in a very small purple bottle with a nozzle and handle, and began to spray small sections of the mirror. The potion hit the mirror and sprayed back upon her face like an ice-cold drizzle…

After a good half hour of cleaning the intricate piece of machinery she began screwing it all up again, and clambered up to the eye-piece, where she took one of the smaller spanners and twisted it around the tiny screws holding the viewing platform together. Casting looks into the eyepiece while she focused and calibrated, Aurora could clearly make out the four white-blue stars that made up the constellation Lyra: a little parallelogram in the sky.

She did not hear the door of the Astronomy Tower open, nor did she hear it click shut, but she heard the methodical footsteps ring across the floorboards – so precise and defined in their course. Aurora knew who it was without even having to cast a single look.

"Looking for your star?" Severus said quietly from below.

Aurora gave a silent scoff as she observed Vega and Altair glittering in front of her right eye.

"Wouldn't be very good at my job if I was" she replied darkly, adjusting the tilt of the focal length with her tiny spanner, hearing several tiny clicks in the process. "I'm about 53 degrees west of Ophiuchus."

"Ah. Sinistra was always a very elusive star. You'd think being the left hand of the Serpent Bearer it would have a bit more… _magnitude_ to it."

She let her gaze break away from the eye piece and shot him a very curious look.

"Someone knows his constellations. I'm almost impressed."

"I know _that_ constellation."

Sinistra could not make anything else out in the light but the outline of his cloak, and still she could feel the heat radiating from his cheeks as he realised what he had said.

The cloaked figure moved away from her to the edge of the tower, where it bent over the rails. Aurora skirted down the steps, slid underneath the truss and got to work on the mount.

"How are you feeling?" the distant voice asked after a while. "Well enough to repair an observatory, it seems…"

Aurora swore underneath her breath as she caught the skin of her finger on the sharp edge of the mount. Sucking the beads of blood that appeared there clean, she replied acidly: "what the hell do you care anymore?"

"Well - according to Dumbledore the St. Mungo's staff are furious with my kidnapping of you. I merely wanted to check that my efforts to bring you back to full health were not in vain."

"I'm perfectly fine, thank you. _Shit_!" – she had momentarily lost her concentration and cut her hand even deeper on the telescope mount's corner. Aurora gave it a swift, angry punch and wheeled herself out.

"Is there absolutely nothing else you could be doing but annoying me!" she snapped viciously at his outline by the sky and whipped out her wand. 

" _Incendio_!"

The torches on the walls of the tower were immediately set alight, and she could finally make out the rather ambivalent expression on Severus's face.

"There are actually a million and one things I could be doing," he answered eventually.

"Well go do them then!"

But he merely turned back and looked outward across the grounds and into the sky. Aurora watched him from behind, breathing heavily with emotion and feeling the blood dripping from her finger with each hard beat of her heart.

" _I_ have something for you to do, actually," Aurora continued, sucking harshly on her finger as he half-turned toward her again. "You can go and have a chat to Hagrid."

He looked at her, completely nonplussed. His robes were rippling in the breeze.

"And why would I want to do such a thing?" he asked.

"The man is completely distraught," Aurora sighed. "Did you realise… I mean did you know how fond he was of your mother?" she felt her voice and anger soften ever-so-slightly.

Severus looked away again as if this avenue of conversation was utterly indecent.

"I did not make it my mission in life to investigate every facet of their relationship, no," he answered quietly. "I know they were in the same year od school together; they were friends."

"I think they were a bit _more_ than friends."

"You may be underestimating just how deep platonic friendships can go," Severus muttered darkly, ominously. There was definitely something else behind that but Aurora did not care to pry at this present time.

She sighed irritably. 

"Well either way, I have just come back from comforting a heartbroken, sobbing mess of a man for at least an hour… and I've had far too much Firewhisky for one night, but that's another issue."

Snape sighed heavily and breathed out a puff of visible cold air over the railings.

"I don't want to talk about her anymore. I don't know how much more clear I can make that," he said firmly. "Hagrid will just have to deal with it himself, as I do."

"I don't think Hagrid has quite the same restraint as you, well, who does...?" Aurora retorted, smirking in spite of herself. She leant backward on the railings, staring up at her masterpiece of a telescope and still biting down on her throbbing finger.

"My mother died when I was fourteen. So, if it's any consolation, I understand why you don't want to talk about yours either," she said suddenly – feeling a surprised jolt inside her, as if she had spoken completely automatically, with no thought as to what was going to come out of her mouth.

Severus's black eyes drifted toward her, where they became fixed and unmoving.

"That is when you came to Hogwarts - I remember." he said.

Aurora nodded.

"Well, you know I attended Uagadou before then. It was just me and my mother. My brothers had moved away, were travelling the world, and I was completing my studies back in Mali."

Their eyes were locked and entranced, Severus seemed positively intrigued by her every single word.

"Eshe, my mother, she was a Muggle," she continued in the same sad tone. "My father was a wizard… he died when I was very young, I can't remember a single thing about him save from the stories my much older brothers told of him. I was never really brought up with magic. If anyone thinks the Statute of Secrecy is hard to live with here, they should move to West Africa…"

Severus nodded an appreciative understanding. "1970's West Africa: I assume witch hunts were rife."

"He knows his constellations _and_ his international magical history..." Aurora smiled, and at the sight of this Severus promptly looked away.

"You could say they were rife," she said darkly. "They killed thousands and thousands of Muggles… well, _mostly_ Muggles, whether those of magical blood were ever executed I have no idea. There is no 'magical community' in Africa as it is here. Too much fear of retribution from the Muggle Witchkillers, you know? I doubt even my father was comfortable in divulging his wizard heritage to my mother until later on. She was of the Tuareg. They lived on the outskirts of Bamako. They hardly accepted my father as an outsider to their clan; if they had found out he was a wizard they would have downright killed him on the spot."

She allowed herself a brief breather as the memory of the worst day of her life thus far drew closer to the forefront of her mind. He was looking at every inch of her face once again, drinking every facet of her in, enthralled, now that her smile had passed... 

"Mother was murdered by the Witchkillers," Aurora said with a shrug, as if it was the most obvious thing that followed. "The Poison Oracle, they called it. Thousands of Muggles were killed by the most poorly made but aggressive poisons made by other fellow Muggles. Oh, but they didn't kill them straight out…" she said with a wry, grim simper "… they were allowed a _trial_ , of course."

"I am assuming it wasn't an impartial one."

She shook her head. "Have any witch trials been impartial over the entire course of history?"

"What was the trial?"

"Boiling water" Aurora replied without a beat and Severus made a noise of revulsion. "They filled a bucket with a boiling water and placed a silver necklace at the bottom of it. Apparently the logic was, if one wasn't a witch then they would be able to retrieve the necklace without a single burn mark. If one was a witch…"

She closed her eyes and bowed her head, fighting the vivid images of that bucket and her mother being dragged toward it that had hit her like a tonne of bricks. Severus shifted uncomfortably next to her.

"You don't… you don't need to speak any more if you don't want," he urged.

"There was nothing I could do…" Aurora croaked, ignoring him. "If I had used magic, and god knows it was haphazard at that age at best, they would have killed us both. They would have killed her no matter what. The trial had burned her skin but it wasn't enough for them…" 

The stinging sensation returned to the corners of her eyes again, but this time she was unable to hold them back. They dripped onto the hands she was clenching forcefully around the railings.

"It took her less than an hour to die from whatever poison they fed her. They left her with me. I tried everything… _everything_..."

Words began to fail, and a sense of complete exhaustion took over her body and mind. There was a stillness that continued for a few moments, and when she looked up to see what on earth Severus was doing, he was gaping at her with a look of complete disgust. She had never seen him look so horrified.

"You think _you're_ a disappointing son?" Sinistra whispered quietly, tears falling down the cheeks in the same way Hagrid's had done. "Well, you're standing next to a very disappointing daughter. A witch who couldn't even save her Muggle mother from being poisoned."

And now Snape was frowning on top of his still very prevalent horror.

"You said it yourself," he said, looking rather out of place but trying very hard to keep his emotions under control. "There was nothing you could have done. You were very young. Surrounded by Muggles who would have slaughtered you if you had even raised your hand. There were a million things _I_ could have done..."

"If you could have stopped Eileen from dying, you would have," Aurora said earnestly… so earnestly, it seemed, that for the first time in known history he had reached out and placed a cold, delicate hand upon her wrist. She didn't recoil, or slap it away as she would have done, but instead she relished the contact: the sensation of someone touching her skin. Severus Snape or not.

"And if you could have done anything to save Eshe, you would have. I am sure of it."

And suddenly a monster sprang to life within her chest and belly. And it wasn't enough. She needed to be devoured. None of this measly faffing about with little looks and little drops of touch. Aurora sidestepped so close to Severus that he had no choice but to either step right back or wrap his arms around her.

He half ended up doing both. He initially recoiled at the unexpected upsurge in physical contact, but after a few moments of standing there, presumably feeling utterly moronic as he so often did in these situations, she felt the comforting weight of his arms around her shoulders.

Sinistra could not have described an odder sensation, being held by him. The only person whom she had ever permitted to hold her in such a fashion, she wanted his touch more than she had done anyone else in her life and it still baffled her senseless. One could tell quite easily that he had never drawn a woman into his arms before... but the fact that he hadn't resisted her, and the feeling of being draped within the great black void of his cloak along with him, was enough to keep her quite, quite, happy. She rested her forehead upon his chest and immediately felt his heart hammering like mad upon it. Deciding to give him a bit of a reprieve from this obviously very alien situation, Aurora broke the contact and stepped back, though their hands remained entwined.

After staring at the sallow and ebony fingers knotted together for a few moments, Severus's black eyes looked back to hers. They could almost be the night sky, the way they glittered and glimmered underneath the stars and the torchlight.

"If it will help," he said. "I can teach you how to block those memories of your mother – just the specific ones -" Severus added at the look of Aurora's expression. "Just the ones you dream about… the ones that keep you awake. I know what it's like."

"Occlumency?" asked Aurora. "I don't know, all I wanted was for you to extract memories from me, not block them…"

She pondered this. Perhaps it would be a good thing, perhaps the visions and nightmares she had struggled with since her teenage years could finally be laid to rest along with Eshe.

But as she gazed upon his long fingers, his thumb gently stroking the knuckles of her own, another idea hit her.

"I suppose it could also be used to lie to Dumbledore…" she mused allowed.

"Why on earth would you want to lie to Dumbledore?" Severus asked, sounding rather taken aback and as if he had never been party to the strained relationship between the Headmaster and the Astronomy professor. She raised a sardonic eyebrow at him.

"Can you just stop trying to pretend that he doesn't want me out of the picture?" she said. "You _know_ he hates the thought of us, you know…" she shifted uncomfortably. "… _us_ being anything else but strict colleagues."

Severus scoffed.

"And does his opinion matter that much to you?"

"It bloody well matters to you!"

"The relationship between the Headmaster and myself differs rather… drastically to yours."

"Well, _you_ know Occlumency!" Aurora objected, getting rather annoyed once again. "So what – you're going to go along pretending you have no idea how much I love you…"

 _Oh for fuck's sake, Aurora, what the hell did you just say_? She could have bitten her own hand off in embarrassment.

The entwined hands disentangled and dropped.

"What?" Severus breathed. "Who said that you love me?"

His cheeks had suddenly become completely flushed with the most vivid red she had ever seen. There was something extremely accusatory in his voice, too, as if she had overheard this declaration from a third party and he was demanding to know who to blame. Aurora almost burst out laughing. Talk about low self-esteem, Jesus Christ…

" _I_ say that I love you, you idiot!" Aurora exclaimed, shoving a single finger hard in between her breasts - as if to ensure that he was aware she was talking about herself.

"Liar," he said without a beat. "That's impossible.”

"You don't get to tell me what I feel. You have _no_ right to do that."

She had never seen him look so out of place, out of his own body, as he did now. Truth be told she had never expected to utter what she just had, but it was there now – she might as well run with it.

"This is all such a mess" she said in all honesty. "And if you're not bothered then you need to stop following me around if you want me to forget this fucking ludicrous thing I have for you!"

Severus looked up toward the dome, he was visibly shaking, his eyes glistening far more than usual.

"It's not… I – it's not that I'm not _bothered_!" he stammered, wrapping his arms around his chest as if to protect himself. "I am – I am very grateful -"

He began pacing the tower like a madman, rubbing his arms vigorously as if it would satiate his shaking. Aurora gaped at him, shaking her head.

"Don't have an aneurysm, Snape," she bit, harping back to their once frivolous and throwaway teasing. "I am well aware, all too aware, of how one-sided this is. And I'd rather not have Dumbledore think I'm some lovesick puppy if it's all the same to you. Slytherin self-preservation, you see."

Severus stopped mid-frantic pace and observed her, looking as exasperated as she felt.

"How can you _possibly_ think that this is one-sided?"

Sinistra laughed and her eyes flashed darkly. "With you, Sev? Easier than you think."

"You can't seriously tell me that you, Queen of Snakes, cannot comprehend subtext."

The nickname made her smirk and she felt the anger drain from her. 

"Queen of Snakes?" she repeated with an intrigued raised eyebrow "call me that again and I may have to take you right here on the floor of the tower…"

And the tension had broken instantaneously. Even the corner of Severus's mouth upturned ever so slightly.

"You know how… how fond I am of you…" Severus spoke as if it greatly pained him to have to actually say it in order for her to believe it. “I guarantee you that everything is reciprocated, even if I am not as intolerably expressive and melodramatic as yourself." 

And suddenly their hands were together again. 

Aurora opened her mouth to argue, but then shut it, opened it again and shut it again.

Don't push it. Just saviour it. This could very well be the closest to him saying that he loves you that you're ever going to get, so bloody well enjoy it.

" _Fine_ ," she said defiantly as she found her face an inch from his own. His thin lips brushed against hers, and soon they had enclosed around one another, it had been a long, long while since she had kissed him… or he had kissed her… she wasn't quite sure who the fool was who started it.

But this time there was less surprise in it, less awkwardness… neither of them were gaping at each with wide eyes, willing themselves to pull away. It was far more familiar this time. It was finally warm and calming.

Of course, it did not last long, it never did… a world in which she spent more than thirty seconds just standing on the spot kissing him was laughable. They parted after a few, brief seconds of uncharacteristic affection, but it was all they needed. It was enough.

"Let Dumbledore think that we can't stand the sight of each other then" Severus whispered in her ear, sending jolts of shivers down Aurora's spine. "Not that he would need much convincing of the fact: most of the time we really _can't_ stand the sight of one another. I’d say that this would have to be one of the more rarer instances where I actually find you mildly tolerable."

Aurora smirked. "I’d have to agree on that one." 

She brought his fingers to her lips and kissed them softly; this time he did recoil, but he did not pull away. Every ounce of affection she had ever shown him always gave her the impression that she had stabbed him hard in the belly.

"If you tell anyone how soft and lenient I've been, I won't hesitate in using a more permanent stinging hex on you..." she warned, releasing her grasp.

Severus gave a scoff of amusement and lowered himself into a very sardonic bow.

"Never, Ma'am. Your secrets are safe."

"Ah, Severus, the sight of you kneeling never fails to delight." Sinistra sighed. She wasn't kidding… if tonight hadn't been such an emotional upheaval she would have been absolutely ravenous for more of his very willing submission.

She was rather amused to find him still mid-bow after this thought. Always a flair for the dramatic.

"May I be excused for the time being?" Snape asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm – but not of the hostile sort.

Sinistra was almost tempted to refuse to play him at his own teasing game; indeed, she spent quite unnecessary time watching him stooping in such a subservient position with a finger to her lip in mock consideration. She wondered just how long she could keep him there before he became irritable and stormed off, but she decided not to go down that route… not tonight of all nights. She had just admitted that she loved the bastard, and to his face, after all.

Aurora stalked back to her telescope and ran a diagnostic hand over it - feeling free now that she had her back to him, to give an inordinate, contented smile.

"You may piss off, yes." She finally answered, at the last possible moment she could have done.


	23. Flashes of Black

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aurora's first attempt at Occlumency doesn't quite go to plan...

Severus Snape had never made Professor Sinistra feel nervous. He annoyed her more than anything else, was occasionally unwittingly hilarious, fascinating like no other, and she loved nothing more than to push his limitless buttons – but unlike most of the school population, not once had she allowed him the privilege of intimidating her. He should be so lucky.

But as the exams drew to an end, and their Occlumency sessions drew nearer, she found that her mouth was frequently dry, her mind packed and full of apprehension (which Aurora was positive would make everything even harder, which increased her stress, which increased her packed mind and, oh, it was vicious and endless…) and she couldn't look Severus in the eyes without regretting her decision to allow herself to sit in front of him and have him break into memories she had no luxury to cherry-pick.

The N.E.W.T.'s had ended; seeing as there was only an extremely small handful of students willing to take the Astronomy N.E.W.T. one would have thought that it shouldn't have been all that tiresome for Aurora… but seeing as those students usually needed three times as much intensive time as everyone else, she had found it an immense relief on her mind when their exams had been done. Two of them were in the process of applying to the Academy of Magical Astrophysics – a process Sinistra knew like the back of hand at this stage – which required even more proof of their academic competence in the form of several assignments and a ridiculous amount of unnecessary paperwork and reference from their Astronomy professor, so she still had that whole ordeal looming over her which rendered her rather sleepless and stressed up to the eyeballs. She wagered she was possibly not optimal Occlumency-student material at the present time… then again, if she succeeded at it now (and Sinistra was sure that she would – she tended to succeed at anything at which she was determined, and by Merlin was she determined to fool the old Headmaster and _anyone_ with the cheek to presume to know what she was thinking and feeling), at least she knew that she could do it anywhere.

It was a Thursday evening, the air warm and breezy as they turned their way into summertime, and she was currently escorting two representatives from the AoMA down the grand staircase and out of the grounds.

"Well, from what I've seen so far of these projects it all looks very positive…" the eldest of the two wizards croaked cheerfully, waving her two protégés vast amount of paperwork around his face, making Sinistra cringe as the doors to the castle were flung open. There was a whole year's worth of her very best students' first attempts at astronomical research in his hand and he was just about ready to allow it all to be swallowed into the abyss.

"It's a tad windy out, Theo…" she mused loudly and deliberately as they clapped their way down onto the grounds. "You might want to put those in your suitcase there."

"Ah, it is, it is, quite right!"

Thank heavens he did. Theodore Corkery had been Vice Chancellor of the AoMA for nigh on sixty years now, he had considered and accepted Aurora's own application as a naïve and credulous Hogwarts graduate, they had met every year a new student raised their hand in anticipation to join the professional wizarding astronomy ranks and as every year passed Aurora was sure that his mind was slowly failing him. She spent a lot of time worrying that her student's applications had been lost or erroneously destroyed, and her mind was only relieved when she received confirmation from the AoMA that positions had either been offered or denied to them. Her suspicions and worries were not helped when Corkery haphazardly shoved all of the paperwork into his suitcase as if he were filling up a hole in the ground.

She inwardly cringed and bit down on her tongue as the second, only very slightly younger wizard shook her hand.

"Pleasure to see you as always, Aurora." He said with a courteous bow. "We'll be in touch shortly; the owl will arrive in about a week as usual…"

"Yes, no need to venture further out to the gate my dear, you head back inside!" Corkery said jauntily as he reached out and not only shook her hand, but kissed it, making her instantly pull it back toward her chest protectively.

 _He's gone…_ she thought. She noticed that the AoMA professor was eyeing him with concern also.

"Well, if you're sure," she said, knowing that she never had any intention to walk them further than the castle, her time was far too valuable. "I assume you both know your way by now."

Corkery gave a highly inappropriate level of laughter.

"Sharp as a tack, this one!" he chuckled. "Yes, we'll get out of your hair. It is a LOT of hair to get out of! A haircut wouldn't go astray!"

Aurora glowered at him. Suddenly her mop of black dreadlocks felt ten times heavier.

"Goodnight, then" she said forcefully as the wizards turned and made their way across the grass. She watched him pass Hagrid, who gave her a nice big wave in the sunset to which she returned before closing the oak doors shut on them all.

* * *

 

The door to Severus's quarters opened with a bang. She saw him jump in the distance, where he was sitting on his tattered leather couch.

"If you _could_ possibly enter my private rooms without tearing down the supporting walls, I would appreciate it…" he drawled.

"Why does every school of knowledge and progress have to eventually be overtaken by senile old men?" she snapped irritably as she shoved the door closed with her shoulder.

Without looking up, his focus instead remaining on an exam paper he was evaluating, Severus replied: "what has Dumbledore done now?"

Aurora scoffed as she threw off her cloak onto the back of a chair. "Nothing, for a rare change. You know, when I was innocent little wreck at AoMA, Professor Corkery was this all-knowing, foreboding figure in the field of astrophysics – Muggle and magical studies combined – and he _was._ Now he's just some deteriorating, slightly racist, old fool the academy can't bear to get rid of."

"Maybe he always was, and you were too ambitious and eager to please to see it." Severus answered, still feeling no need to look up.

"Maybe. But he's definitely losing his mind," Aurora said sadly, surreptitiously running a hand through her course forest of locks, one of the only links to her birthplace. "Can Occlumency stop the mind from disintegrating into foolish old fart territory?"

He rolled up the parchment he had been frowning over and threw it onto the larger of two piles in front of him, he finally looked at her.

"Oddly enough, I have not done much research in the field. You're the academic. You should publish something to enlighten us all."

There was a slight bitterness in his voice as he said this that she did not like. It was not chastising, but it reeked of inner resentment. She sat herself down on the coffee table opposite him, making quite sure that she didn't flatten the Potions theory O.W.L. examination papers as she did do.

"Why do you do this?" Aurora asked so forcefully that she might as well have shoved him. "You're a…" _genius_ had been teetering right on the tip of her tongue before she instantaneously swallowed it whole. She couldn't inflate his head _that_ much. "… you are far too talented to remain _just_ a Hogwarts professor. At least _I_ have my research to prove that fact to me when I need something more. At least I have plans. What do you have?"

Severus opened his mouth to answer, where it hung for a few moments… she was sure that if she was able to break into his mind then her own would implode in on itself – there was an entire universe inside that head. Forever exploding and expanding.

"I believe you are the reason we are both here tonight, not me" he finally answered, effortlessly sidestepping having to directly answer her, as always.

Though, as they both dusted themselves off and rose to find a more open space, there was a lightness in him that had not been present when she had entered the room. It seemed that what he wanted in response to his biting comments about her having the privilege to follow her ambitions was her meagre reassurance…

"Alright…" Severus said as he waved his wand and sent the table in the centre of his room flying toward the wall. "I presume I don't have to go into the theory and history behind Occlumency and Legilimency with you?"

"'course not. Done my homework and everything," Aurora answered with a mock salute.

Her forced jovial mood seemed to hide the fact that she was nervous as all hell quite well. Severus, too, had smirked slightly.

"Very well, then. First thing's first – I am going to use a simpler form of Legilimency on you, so you know when it's coming, when it's happening. Usually I will be wandless, and obviously no one is going to verbalise the Legilimency spell upon you…"

"So I am going to have to keep up these mental barriers the entire time?" she asked, a slither of panic escaping her this time.

Severus shook his head and began pacing in front of her, toying with his wand. "Of course not. But eventually you will know the subtle signs. You will feel it. Besides, there are two things we want to accomplish in these lessons. One: developing your skills in Occlumency to such an expert level that you will be able to counteract any emotion that contradicts what you tell someone, and two: the ability to empty your mind of emotion at will, so the memories of…" he paused and bit his lip, "… so memories won't get in the way."

She took a deep breath and tried to forget that she had an entire life's worth of memories and emotions to block. Aurora was usually very confident in her abilities to the point of near arrogance, but suddenly she felt rather inept and intimidated by what was about to face her. She didn't like it.

"Ok," she said finally when she noticed that Severus had watching her with concern for quite some time. She shook out her limbs and concentrated with all her might on making her mind still and calm… empty, numb…

"Ok…" she said again. "Let's do it. Come on."

But Severus was hesitating and it was making her nerves stand on end.

"I agreed! I agreed to this!" Aurora snapped. "I _told_ you it was fine. _Come on._ What're you waiting for? A formal invitation from my owl?"

She closed her eyes and awaited the blow – though she had absolutely no idea if she was feel anything, it was all the better that she didn't know. She wanted to have an inkling of what it felt like to be taken by surprise first, so she could build up an immunity to it. She heard a brief intake of breath from across the room before the words " _Legilimens!"_ rang out and she was suddenly hit with a tonne of memories that she had no control over.

At first the flashes started out as flickers, tiny little milliseconds of indistinguishable visions, like slides on a projector that had been cut out of order… but slowly the visions began to manifest themselves into tangible images… Sinistra began to recognise them one-by-one… she was back in her old school, in Uagadou, a vast stone fortress carved so high within the mountainside that clouds and mist flitted by right next to them. She was a young girl again, about twelve, sitting high on top of her mountain school, fiddling with the knobs on her telescope as the endless night glistened overhead and the clouds floated along below – one would almost think that they could fall and be caught by them…

Now she was older, certainly no longer in Uagadou nor Africa itself, she was at Hogwarts in her old Slytherin uniform… she was shivering (the Scottish climate never agreed with her), cold, alone… sitting in the common room in the corner, she was trying to concentrate on the Charms textbook she had in front of her and not on the bunch of Slytherins congregating by the fire – laughing and giggling and talking and relishing in their bonds. She felt desperately lonely. Her heart ached.

She was still in her Hogwarts uniform, about seventeen. She was walking along the corridor with her hands shoved into the pockets of her robes because she still hadn't managed to suppress her wandless magic, and she was getting in continuous trouble for it from the teachers…

She was a little girl standing next to her mother, giggling with her feet levitating off the ground, before Eshe promptly but gently pushed her back onto the floor… her mother's eyes were darting too and fro out of the window, she looked panicked… _that's enough…_

The visions started getting dimmer, blacker, until Aurora could not recognise them anymore. Yet she knew they were still there somewhere. She concentrated with all her might on pulling a great big black curtain over the whole lot of them, but it was hard work, and soon enough the visions kept breaking through every crack, until once again she was overwhelmed with them.

She heard a distant, muffled voice call something in the distance and suddenly the memories had all disappeared. The scene manifested itself back into Severus's quarters. Aurora's legs were feeling oddly cold, she looked down and realised that she was kneeling on the floor.

"Come here," Severus wrapped his hands around her elbows and pulled her back into standing position.

"That was a good first attempt," he said, his eyes carefully trained on her face. "Not many people manage to block anything until at least the second or third time."

"I barely remember those things happening," Aurora said, panting and shaking. She had been alright up until she had been forced to see her mother's face.

Severus nodded. "That is, more or less, the point. You have no control over what I see for now, most of it is locked away in the subconscious, but the use of Legilimency can counteract that – it brings about memories that may prove that what you're saying may not necessarily be the truth. A talented Legilimens can search for specific visions and memories in order to do so. What you need to learn is how to block those specific compartments."

"Sounds like a walk in the park…" she bit sardonically, rubbing her temples. She was trying with all her might not to let emotion get the better of her. But when one had absolutely no control over what the Legilimens was picking out of their brain, it was rather difficult not to be overcome when faced with a tangible form of a loved one you could no longer speak to. Facing that last forgotten memory had brought new knowledge to light... her mother had always been frightened, always on edge and waiting for the disaster that finally killed her but not her daughter.

Severus was watching her with the air of someone handling particularly volatile chemicals.

"Shall we cease the practicals?" he asked.

"No," Sinistra replied vehemently, rolling her head around until she she felt a satisfying crack. "Do it once more. I'm going to at least come away from this tonight feeling like I've done _something_."

"Very well," Severus conceded, drawing up his wand once more. "Remember now – the feeling you had when I saw that last memory, the one you eventually closed on me: harness that. Pull everything shut and empty it."

His wand was pointing straight at her. She heard him cry: " _Legilimens!_ " once more, and the room again dissolved into her own mind.

Her older brother was standing just outside the fireplace she tumbled out of, she was thirteen and it had been the very first time she had set foot in the country. She fell into his arms, weeping…

But this time the blackness overcame them much sooner. The memory barely had time to form before her mind had become an empty slate, cold and dark. There were far less rips amongst the black curtain now… not as much light was escaping… but still a few managed to seep through.

She was leaning back in her chair in one of the Academy's colossal observatories, letting a dribble of cold coffee drip delicately into her mouth… another rip appeared and she was no longer drinking coffee but a bottle of Firewhisky in a very messy bed, she was sniggering into the bottle next to a rather dishevelled looking wizard…

Whether she was able to swipe that memory black, she was not sure, because the room once again materialised into view the way it had done on the first attempt. It was apparent that Severus had lifted the spell.

" _Who_ was that?" he demanded.

"What?" Sinistra blinked, rubbing her head furiously once more as the room spun around them.

"That… that _man_ in the last memory! The man you were… in _bed_ with!"

Aurora blinked, feeling so dumbfounded that he was even asking such a question that she couldn't speak for a good ten seconds.

"I don't think that's any of your business!" she shot back viciously.

"That was Black. You and… _Black_ …"

She had never heard him speak a name with such venom and hatred as he had done just then. Severus's face was stark white, and he shook with the purest loathing. He began pacing the room furiously.

"When did this all happen, then?" he finally snapped. "I _dearly hope_ this was before you discovered he was a mass-murdering servant of the Dark Lord!"

"This was a bad idea…" Aurora replied furiously, "I _knew_ you wouldn't be able to remain impartial to this. I believe it was stipulated that no questions would be asked regarding my own personal memories? Memories I don't even remember _having_ , by the way. Do you think I like to remember the fact that I had a brief fling with _Sirius Black?_ "

"I don't know - do you?" Severus muttered under his breath incredulously. She could have reached out and wrung his neck for it.

"Well, if you're suggesting that I have some kind of supressed, torrid fetish for Death Eaters…" she gestured, almost comically, toward the man standing and shaking with rage in front of her, "... _clearly_ I'm not in a rush to break the habit of a lifetime."

Her jokes had always been morbid and her taunts fatal; she was not quite what angle Severus was going to plump for. The pair merely stood blocking each other's path, their eyes boring into each other and their chests heaving in exactly the same rhythm. It seemed almost a scientific certainty that one of them was about to ignite in flames… it was only a matter of time.

After what seemed like eons, he spoke.

"That's not fair" he said, though it was barely more than a whisper.

Aurora sniffed incredulously. She took a few slow, painstaking steps towards him, the soles of her leather boots snapping against the cold stone of the floor, until she could feel his rising breath wash her skin.

"Neither is interrogating me about past relationships that I didn't give a single fuck about at the time, and which make me feel unbearably guilty over in the present. You think I like remembering that I had a meagre sexual association with a man who murdered twelve people? If _you_ take issue with having your past rubbed in your face like that, I can tell you that the feeling is certainly mutual."

When he did not answer, she raised her hands in mock surrender. "You haven't turned me into an Occlumens, yet. Why don't you find out just how insignificant the little maggot was to me at the time? Might be your last chance."

Her dark and heavy eyes flashed a heavy warning, daring him to do it. But his breathing had suddenly become steadier. _The maggot comment clearly has had its designed effect…_ Sinistra thought.

Severus shook his head ever so slightly that one could barely notice him moving.

"No," he murmured, "it doesn't matter which maximum security felon currently finds himself as your flavour of the month – I said I would never do that, and I amnever going to do that. You could at least _attempt_ to trust me."

It was as amicable a resolution as she could have hoped for, though Aurora knew, deep inside, that this new founded knowledge would taint something between them for years to come… if years were what they had, anyway… she was not sure as yet how this would end up manifesting itself, but it was certainly going to. Severus Snape's insecurity-riddled mind would see to it and would see to it regularly, even if he would never outwardly show it.

"I wouldn't be here if I didn't trust you" she said. "And I wouldn't be in this position at _all_ if I didn't love you, like the insane idiot that I am..."

Though he still looked like he was going to be sick at any moment, Severus was now at least struggling to settle himself. He swept away from her and around the couch, where she saw his silhouette sink down upon it, the moon casting a pearly white outline around it.

She knew what Sirius had done to him in school. All of the alumni from those years knew what Sirius and his friends did. They were infamous, the four of them, but Sirius Black and James Potter had been especially notorious and admired… Aurora remembered (it must have been sometime in her fifth year because they were studying for their O.W.L.'s) being curled up in a library chair just after her Defence Against the Dark Arts exam, reading over her Transfiguration notes for the examination the next day, when several girls came giggling around one of the book shelves just opposite her - giggling just quietly enough that Madam Pince would not be alerted…

"Oh, but you should have been there Elizabeth. There were soap bubbles pouring out of his mouth… and you should have seen his _underpants_!"

"I don't want to see anything like that from Snape; I think I'd vomit on the spot!" the other young Gryffindor girl chimed in. Aurora's brow furrowed as she attempted to read her chapter on Animagi, her annoyance rising with every giggle coming from their direction.

"It gets worse! He ended up butt-naked from the waist down -"

A gaggle of giggles erupted now.

" _Gross_!"

"Yeah, I'm surprised James and Sirius weren't instantly blinded."

One of them snorted so loudly that it made Aurora slam down her book.

" _Could you lot shut the hell up_? Some people have exams!" she barked across the benches at them and was met by three very bemused faces. There was no change for any rebuttal, however, because Aurora's very loud protest had now altered Madam Pince, who came charging over to her and ordered her to leave, every muscle in her gaunt face twitching with fury.

She had spent the rest of the night locked up in the Slytherin common room, cursing her wand for not doing what she wanted it to do and feeling stressed up to her eyeballs that she would fail every single subject in which wandwork was a requirement, and it was only the following day, after their Transfiguration examination, that she crossed paths with Severus who had obviously spent every waking moment hidden up in his dormitory. He was avoiding everyone's eye and she had only caught the vaguest of glimpses of him for weeks on end afterward. He was the last to arrive for dinners and the first to leave, he was never in the main common room… of course they had not been close enough friends for Aurora to feel up to saying something to him about it. Cowardly of her, really…

But truth be told, she had forgotten about it; she had forgotten while he would always remember. She had been accepted into the Academy of Magical Astrophysics and was a year into studies when she had run into Sirius Black in the Leaky Cauldron one weekend. It had been nothing, really, their entire relationship had been a laugh more than anything… and during the war they had needed it. Or she had needed it. She had no idea that she had been rolling around with one of He Who Must Not Be Named's most trusted Death Eaters.

And yet there was a part of her that hated Severus for making her ache with guilt on a far more personal level now. How dare he? How dare _she_? How dare she let him feel that way?

"I thought he'd grown out of it, the tormenting people thing" Aurora said slowly, watching Severus sitting, simply staring at the wall in front of him, his thoughts impenetrable – Occlumency or not. "I was wrong."

"You could say that."

"I was also a bit of an idiot who thought I knew everything back then. And Sev, you and I barely spoke in school…"

"I know. It doesn't matter - it's not your fault" he said, waving an exasperated hand in the air.

Aurora gently settled herself down, not on the couch itself, but the leather arm. She rested her elbows on her legs and surveyed him through her knuckles.

"You ok?" she finally queried as casually as she could, though her heart was thumping in her chest.

Severus slowly turned toward her and opened his mouth a few times before answering.

"I would not trouble yourself with such matters" he said. "Your energy would be better spent concentrating on your own concerns."

Aurora shook her head incredulously and bit down on her tongue. "You'll never get it, will you? You _are_ my concern. Surely _you'd_ know what that feels like… I _know_ you visited me in St. Mungo's every day until I regained consciousness. I _know_ you spent the time reading all of my journal articles."

"How on earth do you know that?" Severus asked, looking rather shocked and as if he'd been discovered in the act of performing something rather Machiavellian.

Aurora snorted and shuffled close enough to him that she was able to rest her chin upon his bony shoulder.

"Had an inking - which you have so kindly now confirmed for me. And you left one of the articles on the bedside table."

She felt his head turn toward her as she buried herself further into his neck.

"You really should cover tracks if you want me to continue believing you're as big of a heartless prick that I usually think you are," Aurora murmured into the fabric of his black robes.

Severus's shoulders contracted as he sniffed amusedly.

"Well, I shall make a conscious effort not to be so discernible next time."

Several long fingers made contact with her forehead, where they swept away several wayward dreadlocks to the back of her head, she closed her eyes instinctively and relished in his touch… her hairline prickled with electric pleasure at every single point of contact with his fingertips.

A cold, thin pair of lips kissed the part of her forehead that had previously been shrouded and hidden, the lips hung there for a moment, the pressure slightly increasing before he took a deep breath and released everything… his lips, his hands, his body.

"Get off," Severus scoffed, but not unkindly. She allowed herself to be gently shoved away from his shoulder. "Do you want to be an Occlumens or not?"

Aurora stood up and straightened her robes, she shook her head so that her hair once again fell into its natural position. That was a bit rich of him, she thought, acting like she'd put a halt to the proceedings when it had been him who had reacted far stronger than she had done to that one memory. She closed her eyes once again and centred herself while Severus watched on…

"Let's try for absolute emptiness this time, shall we?" she heard his voice whisper soothingly to her out of the darkness. Aurora nodded, letting a deep breath escape her lungs and seep out through a partially opened mouth.

_Absolute emptiness…_

"Relax into it…"

_Relax…_

"Ready?"

Darkness, blankness, a void began dissolving through her veins and pulsed its way up into every part of her body. She willed it to consume her, allowed and permitted it to take her and shroud her… until there was nothing left but her breathing…

This time Severus did not utter the incantation, the Legilimency spell took her completely off guard as she meditated on it. But even so, there was still darkness, there was a black wall where once he could have glanced in; every memory that was attempting to burst through was failing, the wall was impenetrable.

"Good, good, that's good…" Aurora heard him whisper in what now seemed like a distant, far-off land.

It had been past midnight by the time Aurora and Severus had called it quits for the night. He looked just as terrible and exhausted as she felt (and probably looked, too), and it was the first time she realised that using Legilimency must have been as fatiguing and strenuous as attempting to repel it with Occlumency.

The sleep that followed was empty and blissful, for once. Aurora had no dreams or visions of her mother that night, no deafening visions of screams or boiling water or poisons… nothing that would usually wake her frequently and leave her lying there for hours on end gazing up at the drapes hanging from her bed…

And while she knew it was a lucky one-off, and that much more work needed to be done in order for her to repel exact memories and feelings and keep them at bay: just that one night without being forced against her will to revisit her old home, and the guilt of being the one that lead to her mother's death, was more than enough. It had already been more than worth it.


	24. Night O.W.L.'s

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Professor Sinistra CAN use her stick.

_Elemental change is closely connected to the movement of celestial bodies. Crystal growth, wood decay and other ingredients necessary for the creation of Alchemic potions and substances are dependent on both the position, the absolute (position in the ecliptic), and the relative position to other bodies…_

Aurora rubbed her sore temples as she marked what felt like the twenty-thousandth Alchemy specialty theoretical exam paper. Her quill, dripping with blood red ink, teetered over the top of the student's own black ink as she tried to pull back the shreds of concentration that had been slowly escaping her all evening.

Sinistra was a rather different… breed… to the other professors in one main aspect: her sleeping patterns. All of her colleagues were required by means of their respective areas of study to rise early for their planning and classes, begin teaching by nine most days, and finish their working day late afternoon (night supervision duties excepted). She, Aurora, on the other hand, often taught well beyond midnight for half of her week – and Minerva had always been gracious enough to strike out every morning from her timetable.

And so Aurora often found herself alone most evenings, when everyone had usually retired to bed, lounging in the staffroom or her office, able to work in complete silence and peace. She revelled in it. The cusp of night and dawn was _her_ time.

 _Identifications of weekdays and their particular uses in Alchemy?_ She noted above the messy and hastily-written paragraph of her student's. She reached clumsily for one of the bread rolls beside her and ripped off the top of it with her teeth. Her dinner for the night.

Two points off for that, Aurora thought. Her eyes darted to the incessantly intimidating pile of never-ending rolls of parchment in front of her, and she stifled an audible groan.

It had been a particularly trying week… on top of all of her exam marking, practical lessons, and compiling of applications to AoMA, she was currently well on her way into becoming a full fledged Occlumens.

It had not been easy. Most nights she had been forced to relive extremely painful and traumatic memories as Severus's Legilimency had become far more specific and hard-hitting in nature. It was exposure therapy, in a sense; the more Aurora found herself reliving the horrific memories and feelings, the more she was able to counteract the white-hot panic they once invoked in her. However, in order to repair herself she had to be broken first, and regularly had found herself in a crumped, sobbing heap on Severus's floor.

He had not been unkind in his reaction to this, but neither had he been very sympathetic. It was clear that the visions of her past from their first lesson was still grating on him, but Snape was so very good at being an elusive prick about things that Aurora was unable to confront him about it. They merely spent their lessons mostly in cold and prickly taciturnity, and outside of the lessons they had found no cause to speak to one another.

Not that his attitude mattered one iota… she was getting good, very good at her cerebral internal defence. So good that she could now pick and choose what memories to show Severus, to counteract the questions he was asking her. She'd show visions of a happy childhood with her brothers and her mother, in place of the memory of watching Eshe collapse under the potency of the poison that had been force-fed to her - when she had been accused of witchcraft by the Witch Killers. Aurora was able to weave her own story into the mind of the probing Legilimens, and block most of what contradicted her story.

 _The element of silver is most strongly correlated with the moon and its phases…_ the exam paper went onto read.

A mark for that. Sinistra ticked the sentence, but then shook her head incredulously at the next one...

_The creation of silver under the guidance of the lunar phases identifies strongest with the weekday of Thursday…_

"Nope…" she muttered under her breath, adding in a cynical: ' _Monday, actually_ ' in her usual red ink before something outside of the deathly quiet staff room caught her attention.

Aurora looked up from her piles of parchment and frowned at the door, almost impossible to see in the dimming candlelight of the staffroom. There seemed to be a scuffling outside, or at least one pair of very hasty footsteps. The lone Astronomy professor replaced her quill hastily back into the inkpot and opened the door quietly, the lamp and firelight from the staff room spilled burning red projections into the dark and cold corridor ahead of her.

She poked her head out into the hallway, twisting her neck left and right to catch sight of anyone.

"Anyone there?" she called. It was not unusual for the odd disobedient student to be scurrying around outside of their dormitories after hours, and it was not unusual for the odd prank or two to be committed around the vicinity of the staffroom… Aurora assumed that seeing the lights eking out from the underneath the door might have warned them off.

"Did you see anything odd?" Sinistra asked one of the two stone gargoyles standing at attention outside of the staffroom.

"Why'd you ask him and not _me_?" the other gargoyle protested loudly. " _I_ am clearly the more perspicacious of us…"

"Yeah like heck you are!" the other gargoyle snapped in his direction.

"Oh, for god's sake, never mind…" Aurora grumbled, she threw up her hands which had the unfortunate side-effect of making one of the stone gargoyle's ears fall off.

"Oi! Take it easy, your worship! We're only trying to help 'ere!" he objected loudly. Sinistra stared down at the shattered ear on the floor with a look of extreme bemusement. Thirty-one years old and still she had not grown out of her old wandless roots.

She took out her Fir and Phoenix feather wand this time, muttered " _Reparo!_ " languidly, preparatory to heading back into the staffroom. The ear moulded back together once more and sealed itself back upon the gargoyle's head.

"It's a miracle! Professor Sinistra _can_ use her stick!" he said cantankerously before both professor and gargoyles heard a very distinctive sob from the end of the corridor, near the stairs to the First Floor.

Waving her wand once more, she whispered " _Lumos!"_ and headed toward what sounded to her like a crying student. There was a ruffle of robes as she reached the end of the corridor.

"It's i-impossible…" they were sobbing to themselves. "Too many obstacles… I can't…"

"Who's there?" she called as she reached the end of the corridor, the crying ceased immediately. "Why are you outside of your dormitory out of hours? I shall have to take house points-"

But as Aurora stormed into the adjacent part of the first floor corridor, she collided heavily with a figure that definitely not resemble that of a student. Her lit wand tumbled out of her hand and she instinctively reached out in front of her face - it sent the man flying backward, where he tumbled into a pile of robes upon the hard floor.

"Quir… _Quirinus_?" she gaped after she had picked up her hand and pointed it directly at him. The Defence Against the Dark Arts professor was gaping up at her from the floor, his eyes awash with tears.

"What the hell, Quirinus? What are you doing running about in the dark? What's the matter?" she demanded quietly but noxiously, her wand still trained on his face.

Quirrell was struggling with his robes as she offered a hand to help him up – which he refused.

"I… sorry, Professor, must've been sleepwalking…"

Aurora squinted at him incredulously. That was possibly the worst excuse she had ever heard - and she had been a teacher for five and a half years now.

It was only with Quirrell standing here, in front of her, that Aurora realised how very odd it was to see him. Of course, this time of year usually meant that she did not see every single one of her colleagues on a day-to-day basis (they were usually either shut up in their offices or occasionally spaced out in the staffroom), but she had suddenly realised that she hadn't been in the same room at Quirinus for about a month… he looked sicker than usual, gaunt and wracked with worry… and he would not look her in the eye.

"You sleepwalk fully clothed and run around crying a lot, do you?" she asked sceptically.

Quirrell gave a nervous laugh and his eyes were darting around her head like mad.

"Well, you know, the added stress of… just the added stress… you know…?" He looked positively mad, and like he was about to collapse again at any moment.

Aurora bit down on her thumbnail as she surveyed him. What on earth was he hiding? The Quirinus she had always known had always flown well under the radar, never drawn much attention to himself, and he'd certainly never been this stressed over end of year admin.

"It's late" he stammered, wringing his hands. "Well, you know, for some people, for me I mean, not so much for the Astronomy professor I assume!" another little nervous laugh escaped him.

Sinistra nodded, highly entertained by this whole ordeal.

"Dawn is usually my turn in time, yes," she answered. "You don't need help getting back to your quarters, do you?"

"No, no! Fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. Thank you, Professor…" Quirrell babbled. _And since when did he refer to me as 'Professor'?_ Aurora thought wildly.

"Very well," she said, and, realising that she was still currently blinding him with her wand, lowered it just a few inches.

"Goodnight, Professor Sinistra."

The way he said her name was so clinical in comparison to everything else. It was almost as if he were trying purposely to pull out any emotional conations in addressing her… turning her into some unfeeling object as opposed to an old friend. Aurora didn't like it. A vague realisation began to dissolve itself within her veins somewhere.

She watched him retreat a few paces down the hall, frowning after him with her arms crossed.

"Professor Quirrell…" she called just as callously before he could open the door at the end. She saw his shoulders rise in a heavy sigh as he stopped in his tracks.

"Yes?"

"You might be pleased to know that I'm on the mend from my accident."

This time Quirrell turned so quickly that a piece of his turban came loose, he scampered to twirl it up again.

"Are you? That's – that's good! That's w-wonderful!"

Aurora nodded, giving a shrewd smile she was sure he could not see from that distance.

"Yes, the brain had a bit of a knock there for a while, but things are slowly coming back to me."

There was almost deafening silence as he stared at her from the other end of the corridor. Aurora watched him for any sign of onus or self-reproach; something that would give him away. It was almost nigh impossible in this light and at that distance, but the stiffness of his body language alone made her feel slightly sick, and she had not a clue why.

"Good…" he said so quickly that it was almost indecipherable with the speed of which he uttered it. Quirrell then turned quickly on his heel, and once again Sinistra was left alone in the darkness. She had half a mind to run after him and threaten him to admit something to her, but instead she gave the now empty hall a scowl and returned to the staffroom, where she groaned upon seeing the still-teetering pile of exam papers. A quick glance at the clock told her that it was a few minutes past two in the morning.

"Forget this…" Aurora mumbled as she began gathering up the piles and shoving it into her pigeonhole; she extinguished the candles and fires before she exited with one swish of her wand.

"Do you realise what time it is?" one of the gargoyles grumbled as she locked the staffroom door behind her and stalked away. "We have to be up at six for the other teachers, you know!"


	25. Circadian Rhythms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Severus receives an welcome and unwelcomed wake-up call...

He had always been a light sleeper. There was a multitude of reasons for this. It had started with, as most negative aspects of his life had (so pretty much all of them), Tobias.

Severus spent most of his childhood locked in his bedroom by his mother: who came from the school of thought that the more Tobias was forced to forget about his son's existence the better. Instead of this feeling like some kind of saving grace, however, Severus had spent every waking (and slumbering) moment in an anxious panic. He often fell asleep with one eye open, waiting… listening… anticipating blows and shouts from downstairs… usually followed by his mother's muffled weeping.

Ever since then it had been a downhill battle. Good for surveillance and catching wayward students; bad for his overall health.

Severus was therefore absolutely unsurprised when he found himself, once again, shaken wide awake from his sleep at what appeared to be a god-forsaken time of the night. He gave a heavy sigh and glared into the dark, cold abyss of his bed chambers.

His leg was panging something crazy still, after all this time. He wondered vaguely if the blasted creature's bite had some venomous property in it that would cause him gratuitous throbbing pain for the rest of his natural life, before omitting yet another sigh and propping himself up upon elbows and reaching for his wand.

It was only then, when his right elbow had sunk far deeper than his left and had brushed against something warm and soft, that Severus realised – conceivably for the first time in his life – that he was not alone in his bed.

Without a single millisecond of hesitation, he had leapt for his wand and whipped back around. Blinding light radiated from him which illuminated the entire room.

"What the _fuck_ are you doing here?!" he demanded angrily, rubbing his hand forcefully against his temple and thanking his lucky stars that he hadn't been so taken aback as to send a few curses in the Astronomy mistress's direction.

Aurora was lying prostrate next to him, fully dressed, out of the covers, gazing vaguely at the canopy of his bed and looking completely unperturbed from being Lumos'd right in the face. This annoyed him even more.

"Quirinus…" came her only retort. She was still gazing upward.

"When I gave you the incantation to get into my quarters, I didn't mean that you could just barge in and out - especially in the middle of the night - whenever you saw fit! I thought we - "

The tirade tumbled out of his furious mouth before he could register what she had even said.

"Quirrell?  _Quirrell_!" Severus repeated loudly and vehemently, he glared down upon Aurora now, his synapses prickling to life. "What did he do? Did he hurt you? I'll - !"

He was halfway scrambling out of the sheets, ignoring the now searing pain in his lower leg and ready to commit a particularly ferocious form of homicide, before he felt a hand grab a fistful of his nightclothes. Severus shot around and finally met Sinistra's gaze; she was shaking her head in a very peculiar fashion.

"It was him, wasn't it?" she whispered shrewdly. "He was the one who Obliviated me."

Severus did not particularly care about discussing this issue at present, the fury that came along with imagining Quirrell in the same room, alone, with Borealis was still bubbling within his chest like a cauldron on the brink of explosion.

"Where was he? What was he doing?" Severus continued in his demands, though he had ceased fighting with the linen for the time being.

Aurora shrugged.

"Nothing particularly underhanded. But he'd been crying, I could hear him outside the staffroom…"

 _Crying, crying again!_ Severus thought, his hand continuing to rub his now pounding temples. If the man spent half of the time he spent blubbering into actually trying to get past the protections to the Stone, then he would have certainly achieved his goal by now surely.

"How'd you know it was him?" Severus asked, realising that he was still currently blinding her with his wand. He hastily pulled it back and rested it upon the beside table, where it continued to gleam away.

"I went out into the corridor and found him," Aurora replied. "He was just… _weird_. I inserted a well-placed comment about my memory returning to me, and then he gave me this look -"

"Look?"

She nodded solemnly, her eyebrow raised indicating that she knew more than she was letting on. "Guilt," she continued. "It was definitely guilt. What on earth do you think he's up to? And don't give me that 'Dumbledore made me swear not to tell anyone, Dumbledore knows everything, Dumbledore's word is law' crap, I think I deserve a proper answer, don't you?"

Severus bit his lip and continued to stare down at her. Yes, she did deserve a proper answer. She'd almost been murdered by the man and yet here he and Dumbledore were waiting for another lead… for an actual murder, perhaps? And Dumbledore had just _expected_ that he would not breathe a word of this to her when Dumbledore knew (he had to have known) how much she meant to Severus. Perhaps Borealis had been right all along; perhaps the headmaster was trying to insert a very expansive wedge between them. Well, no more.

And so he told her everything, everything they had suspected Quirrell of from the start, of trying to steal the Philosopher's Stone for himself, of something happening to him during his Sabbatical to Albania, everything he knew about Quirrell he divulged to her.

It must have been heading toward the break of dawn by the time they had finished discussing the Defence Against the Dark Arts professor. Severus had completely forgotten the baffling oddity that was another human being next to him in his own bed. They were both less than a few inches from each other now, both resting on an elbow respectively.

Aurora had let him finish what he desperately wanted to say - but by the way her brow furrowed and the rate at which her breathing was solidly increasing, he knew that she would not stay silent for much longer.

"… the most maddening thing is the fact that he hasn't left a single trail of evidence," Severus concluded with a stifled yawn. "There is nothing that Dumbledore can use to incriminate him. It is obvious at this stage that you must've stumbled in on him that night he Obliviated you -"

"He almost _killed_ me!" Sinistra bit back angrily from his pillow. "Obliviation doesn't leave a gaping gash in one's head. And you said that he ended up with a black eye… is not that enough evidence to Dumbledore that a scuffle happened between us? That I saw something I wasn't meant to, he threw me across the room, I punched him in the face and then I was Obliviated?" she sighed and leant back on both elbows, shrugging dramatically. "Seems pretty clear cut to me."

"If I could lock him up in Azkaban based on that evidence alone, I would," Severus assured darkly. "I would throw him to the Dementors myself and watch them Kiss him in succession with _great_ pleasure."

Aurora sighed and fanned herself theatrically. She stretched back out onto her back.

"And they say romance is dead. Thank you for that."

He was sure that she had intended her response to come across as mere sarcasm, but there was a feeble earnestness in her voice that both inflamed and assuaged everything inside him. How a person could have ever made him drawn to two polar opposites at once he would never know.

"I'm tired…" Severus lied after silently surveying her floodlit and spellbindingly beautiful face for far, far too long.

"You are, are you? Talk of potential murderers at Hogwarts a bit tedious for you, is it?"

He clicked his tongue irritably and shook his head, now looking in the opposite direction.

"Leave me, Borealis; some people have to get up at a decent time to make a living."

With Sinistra fully clothed in her deep blue robes - a perfect mirror of twilight - and he in nothing but his grey nightshirt, he felt extraordinarily maladroit and mediocre. He half wished she'd disrobe herself… then again, perhaps not.

"When are you going to stop all of… _this,_ " Aurora demanded, sweeping a vague hand over him.

Severus cleared his throat indignantly. "I am afraid that this is just the way I look. Unfortunate, but life isn't particularly fair -"

Sinistra threw back her head and let out a virulent snicker. "You are utterly clueless. And your self-esteem is fucked, by the way."

Giant pulses of pain was currently spurting toward his leg and it took all of his will not to grimace, to show her any weakness. Trust it to have a flare up right now, right at this bloody moment.

"Your neck must be sore from carrying around that crown of yours…" he bit sardonically.

Oh yes, he knew what exactly it was Aurora wanted him to stop – she wanted him to stop thinking about her, her and Black, _together_. But up until this point it seemed nothing sort of a completely impossibility… no matter how swift and meaningless their liaison had been.

 _Why_? Of all the people she could have had, could have touched, could have felt affection for – _why_ did have to be him? It was the most unpleasant thought that kept appearing at the most unpleasant of times. Worse than that, exponentially worse than that, he hated her for just how incensed it had made him. It was an anger that refused to detach itself from the walls of his insides all week. He had eventually learned to live with the excessive yearning to break into Azkaban and kill Black with his bare hands - the yearning that had always been there. But it was distant noise, something he was able to tune out and eventually forget about, save something triggering it.

And then the _bastard_ had to appear again, right in front of him, in as physical a form as he could without him actually being in the room. It wasn't enough that Black alone had led to the eventual death of Severus's best friend in the world; the felon was also to be found, naked, in the arms of the woman he…

Severus let the grimace show freely now. The physical pain of his leg was immaterial to what he was feeling in his chest.

He couldn't even think that word. That blasted 'L' word. He was sure it was enough to rip his entire body apart.

Yes, he hated her for how much more she made him hate Black. Up until now Severus had been positive that it was a complete impossibility to hate him more than he already did… but Borealis had proven that all wrong, like she had proven everything else he thought about himself wrong. Fuck her, and fuck Black, and fuck _himself_ for all of this. It would be an eternal thorn in his side forever, he was sure of that.

Severus barely noticed that Aurora was now eyeing him with concern from her side of the bed ( _his_ side of the bed! Both sides were _his_ , damn it).

"What's hurting?" she asked, a deep crease between her black brows.

 _Everything. Everything bloody hurts and it's never stopped_. He wanted to say.

"My leg is playing up - it's nothing!" he said, waving Aurora away when her hands suddenly moved toward him. "If you won't leave, could you at least shut up and let me try to get some sleep for another hour or so?"

"I can see why you didn't go to Poppy now" Aurora replied. "Bit hard to explain that you'd been skulking around the third-floor corridor and been accosted by the gigantic three-headed monstrosity guarding the portals to the Stone…"

"Precisely."

"Just a stroke of luck that you have me to misappropriate hospital wing supplies, huh? You're bloody lucky Poppy and I get along so well."

Severus sniffed amusedly, his eyes feeling graciously heavy once again. Whatever was said after that had been swiftly forgotten by the following morning - for the next thing he knew it was daybreak; a dull, orange light illuminated the cracks between the heavy curtains over his windows and had stirred him awake once more.

He rubbed his forehead, failed to suppress a weighty yawn and turned slowly to his right… the Astronomy professor was still there, still left side of the bed, and still clothed – only now she had managed to wrap herself up in his bed sheets. Her breathing was steady and peaceful, black ropes of dreadlocks fell around her softly closed eyes and her half-opened mouth. Severus had never seen her asleep before; it was rather beguiling, and she was rather beautiful. He put that down to the fact that she was, for once in her life, not coherent enough to vex him senseless…

Making sure not to rouse her (not that it was difficult – he was a former spy, after all), Severus flung himself around to sit on the side of the bed and bit down on his tongue preparatory to putting pressure on his leg. He hobbled off to the bathroom praying to all hell that it was just a fleeting bout of pain, and he wouldn't have to suffer another day of embarrassment limping around the castle.

Aurora was still asleep when he returned to dress himself and get started on his legions of buttons. Severus supposed she would be slumbering for quite some time; her familiarity with the dead of night would put all of the owls in the castle to shame. He finished fastening the very button on the tip of his sleeve, pulled on his cloak, and walked over to her side – _his side!_ – of the bed where he very gently pulled up the sheets so that they completely enveloped her. Sinistra grasped at them unconsciously and curled up tight into a ball.

It was with a deep feeling of heaviness, something inexplicable, which Severus left his quarters with that morning. With his mind still on the altercation between Quirrell and Borealis the previous night, he made sure to place all of the protective charms he could think of on his doors – so that no intruder would be able set foot in there without suffering severe consequences, so that Borealis could sleep without such anxiety.

_Perhaps… perhaps that was why she ended up in his rooms in the first place… perhaps she really did trust that he wouldn't dare let anything happen to her under his watch…_

And so there the rather conflicted Potions master silently sat at breakfast that morning, feeling like both his mind and his body were residing in two places at once. He made sure to put extra effort into his scowls and glares to compensate for the unbearable feeling of uneasiness.


End file.
